Zachary Coile | Washington | October 19

San Francisco Chronicle - California law a model for new measure

A bipartisan group of senators, borrowing heavily from California's efforts to fight climate change, fired the starting gun on what's expected to be a long global-warming debate in Congress with a proposal for limits on greenhouse gases affecting every major segment of the nation's economy.

Lawmakers, industry groups and environmentalists have waited months for the bill, which was introduced Thursday by Sen. John Warner, R-Va., and Sen. Joe Lieberman, an independent from Connecticut.

The bill, expected to be the centerpiece of the Senate's efforts to address climate change, would cap emissions and gradually reduce them using a market-oriented cap-and-trade system in which allowances to emit greenhouse gases would be bought and sold.

"Today will be remembered as a turning point in the fight against global warming," said California Sen. Barbara Boxer, chair of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.

The bill requires cuts in carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases from electric utilities, transportation and manufacturing, accounting for about 75 percent of U.S emissions.

The bill would cap greenhouse gases at the 2005 emission level starting in 2012 and gradually reduce them to 1990 levels - a 15 percent reduction - by 2020. The measure requires deeper cuts over the long term: a 65 percent reduction from 1990 levels by 2050.

"The goal should be to keep the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere below 500 parts per million," Lieberman said. "That will avoid what (scientists) describe as a high risk of severe global warming impacts here in the United States ... but also around the world."

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Uh huh... Actually, that level would cause severe problems, Joe, not avoid them.- Raja