Global warming the hot topic at Boxer hearing

January 31, 2007

By David Whitney
The San Luis Obispo Tribune

WASHINGTON — A key Senate committee found broad bipartisan support Tuesday for doing something about global warming, but deep divisions remained over how to curb the emissions that scientists think are causing the Earth to warm rapidly.

"A consensus is developing that we must take action at the federal level now," declared Sen. Barbara Boxer, a California Democrat, who’s presiding over her first hearing as the chairwoman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.

In the House of Representatives, Democrats charged Tuesday that they’d found repeated instances in which the Bush administration had ordered changes to scientific studies to soften references to the cause and effect of global warming.

Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Los Angeles, the chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said top administration officials had sought "to mislead the public by injecting doubt into the science of global warming and minimizing the potential dangers."

Boxer said she’d try to steer the Senate committee toward enacting something like California’s tough global warming law, which requires lowering emissions to 1990 levels by 2020. But she acknowledged that she was uncertain how far she’d get.

The hearing, the first of many that Boxer will hold before trying to craft a compromise bill, was limited to senators describing where they stood on the issue. Several Republicans joined committee Democrats in calling for legislation.

There was less agreement on how far and how fast Congress should go to reduce emissions from cars, power plants and industry. The emissions, primarily carbon dioxide, are thought to be contributing to global climate change by enveloping the Earth in a virtual greenhouse.

Many Democrats and industry leaders favor "cap and trade" legislation, which would set tough federal emissions standards and allow companies to sell emissions credits when they fall below that standard and to buy credits when they exceed the limits.

Others want to limit emissions reductions to power plants, which are responsible for about 40 percent of total U.S. emissions. That could invite a fight with states that rely heavily on coal-fired power plants, particularly in the Midwest, or states that provide coal for them.

Another controversial issue is whether a uniform national standard should pre-empt tougher state laws, an issue that could divide California lawmakers if the deal Boxer cuts falls short of the state’s standards.

Boxer kept the hearing from drifting into an ideological argument with a minority of Republican committee members who remain skeptical that human activity is at the root of rising temperatures and changing global weather patterns.

Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla. — who was unseated as committee chairman by the November elections, which thrust Boxer into her most prominent role in Congress — is a skeptic of global warming and has been able to bottle up remedial legislation. He didn’t seriously challenge the science Tuesday.

The harshest Republican critic was Idaho Sen. Larry Craig, who said the rush to enact legislation was driven by the 2008 presidential elections, which Democrats didn’t dispute.

Some of the more prominent advocates of global warming legislation are candidates for the White House. Among those speaking at Tuesday’s hearing were Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain and New York Democratic Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Differences have emerged already between Boxer and Sen. Dianne Feinstein, California’s senior Democratic senator, over whether federal legislation should pre-empt the state law to create a uniform national standard.

"If you think about it, there should be one system," Feinstein testified Tuesday. "And that system should be worldwide."

Boxer is a strong states’ rights supporter. In an exchange after Feinstein’s testimony Tuesday, however, the two senators seemed to move closer together.

"If we have one system with good goals, then one system is the best," Boxer said. "One system is what we need if we can do it."

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