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Senator: Global Warming Bill Needs Work
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[October 27, 2007]
WASHINGTON (AP) -- A bipartisan Senate bill to limit greenhouse gases will have a hard time getting the 60 votes needed to overcome parliamentary roadblocks unless it addresses some of industry's concerns, a Republican senator said Friday.
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 Sen. George Voinovich, R-Ohio, told reporters that a requirement in the bill to cut heat-trapping emissions by 15 percent by 2020 can't be met without a push to develop new technologies such as ways to capture carbon dioxide from coal-burning power plants.
"Technology should be driving all this," said Voinovich. He said he favors action to address global warming, but that any bill should include incentives to develop the technologies
- such as carbon capture from power plants - needed to meet the emission-reduction mandates.
Legislation introduced last week by Sens. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., and John Warner, R-Va., would require that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases from power plants, industrial facilities and transportation be cut by 70 percent by mid-century.
Lieberman's subcommittee dealing with global warming is expected to advance the bill in the coming weeks. With some changes it is likely to emerge from the full committee before year's end.
Voinovich, speaking to reporters at a session sponsored by the Energy Daily publication and the American Chemistry Council, urged that time be given to make changes. "If it's jammed through," he warned, then many senators will find it difficult to support efforts to overcome a filibuster.
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 Voinovich said Congress needs to address global warming but that the Lieberman-Warner bill ramps up emissions limits so quickly that it exceeds the current technology needed to meet the reductions.
Other senators have argued that the bill doesn't go far enough to achieve the greenhouse gas reductions needed
- along with actions by other countries - to avoid serious global temperature increases later this century.
At a hearing on Wednesday, Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., said an analysis by an environmental group suggested that overall heat-trapping emissions would be cut by only 13 percent by 2020 and 51 percent by 2050 because of loopholes and the fact that the bill does not apply to all emission sources.
"Work remains to be done to make this legislation stronger," said Lautenberg.
[Associated Press;
By H. JOSEF HEBERT]
Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This
material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or
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