Dingell, Boucher call for steep greenhouse gas cuts

The darkening economic outlook may force lawmakers to delay some public policy priorities, but two House Democrats indicated Tuesday that curbing global warming won’t be one of them.

House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman John Dingell (D-Mich.) and Energy and Air Quality subcommittee Chairman Rick Boucher (D-Va.) released a 461-page bill that seeks to cut greenhouse gas emissions by roughly 80 percent over the next four decades. Environmental groups welcomed that target, but criticized the bill, which Dingell and Boucher refer to as a “discussion draft,” for delaying dramatic emissions reductions until after 2020.

{mosads}The long-awaited legislation relies on a so-called cap-and-trade program to make those reductions. Companies would be able to buy or sell emissions allowances on an open market, depending on whether they met or exceeded emissions caps set by federal regulators.

“Politically, scientifically, legally, and morally, the question has been settled: regulation of greenhouse gases in the United States is coming,” Dingell and Boucher wrote to committee members on Tuesday. “The only remaining question is what form that regulation will take.”

Part of the impetus for the release of the bill seems to be to head off a separate effort at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to cut emissions through federal regulation, an option made available last year when the Supreme Court ruled that the EPA had the authority, under the Clean Air Act, to address global warming.

Dingell and Boucher said “elected and accountable” members of Congress — and not the executive branch — should design the regulatory program. They also said a bill would have to be bipartisan to pass, taking a shot at the Bush administration and Republican leaders on the Energy and Commerce Committee for not participating in a constructive dialogue as the bill was being written.

Environmental groups that have waited for the House committee to release a draft bill for months welcomed its arrival. But a quick read of the text did reveal a few areas of concern.

Tony Kreindler, a spokesman for Environmental Defense Fund, said the initial emissions cuts called for in the bill are too gradual. Polluters would only have to reduce emissions by 6 percent over 2005 levels by 2020, a much less aggressive target than the climate change bill the Senate debated earlier this summer.

“The short-term targets really tell people out in the marketplace that they need to get going,” Kreindler said.
Frank O’Donnell, president of Clean Air Watch, noted in an e-mail to reporters that the discussion draft includes the option for federal pre-emption, something that the liberal elements of the Democratic Party and environmental groups have opposed. The bill could block California and other states from going forward with ongoing efforts to cut carbon dioxide from tailpipe emissions, which Dingell, a big backer of the auto industry, has opposed.

But O’Donnell said his group welcomed the “concrete” long-term goals included in the legislation.

Environmental groups also like what the bill left out: a so-called “safety valve” that would weaken emission reduction targets if the price of allowances reached a predetermined threshold. Business groups that worry the bill would increase the costs of energy and therefore hurt the economy have lobbied for the inclusion of a safety valve.

In the letter accompanying the discussion draft, Dingell and Boucher also make clear that the bill is only part of the solution. The two also call for “massive and unprecedented investments in both existing and innovative technologies that do not contribute to climate change.” Dingell and Boucher said Congress needs to spend the money on renewable energy sources and also a process that allows coal-fired power plants to sequester and store carbon dioxide emissions.

But perhaps more important than any particulars at this point is the fact that Dingell and Boucher, two members with whom environmental groups have clashed, have set down on paper their broad goals for climate change, a month before an election in which the economy is paramount on voters’ minds. That signals a shift in the old debate of environment versus the economy, which was often won by pocketbook issues.

“This puts this right back on the agenda,” Kreindler said.