Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus says he has "serious reservations" about the climate change bill as it is, and has asked fellow Democrats to work toward less stringent requirements so that the bill can make it through the Senate. To read the Senate's climate change bill, S.1733, click here.
In addition to lowering the 2020 target for greenhouse has emissions, Baucus also hoped to attached preemption language to the Senate bill that would stop EPA from implementing a 2007 Supreme Court opinion, Massachusetts v. EPA, 549 U.S. 497 (2007), which opens the door to new greenhouse gas emission standards.
Speaking at the start of an Environment and Public Works Committee hearing, Baucus urged action:
We cannot avoid a first step that takes us further away from an achievable consensus from common-sense climate change legislation. We could build that consensus here in this committee. If we don't, we risk wasting another month, another year, another Congress, without taking a step forward to our future.
Environmental groups are also unhappy with the latest version of the Senate climate change bill, which includes the same percentage of emission allocations for domestic wildlife and natural resource protection as the House version of the bill. This is far less than what the environmental groups had hoped for.
A coalition of nearly 600 conservation, outdoor and recreation groups - including Defenders of Wildlife, the National Wildlife Federation and the Nature Conservancy - asked the Senate to dedicate 5 percent of the total allowance value to federal, state, and tribal agencies for conservation purposes. As the bill reads now, domestic natural resource protection would get 1 percent of the allowance, with increases in later years.
The debate on these issues continues with hearings throughout this week in the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works.
To read more about the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works hearings, click here for the Committee's website or here for a story from the New York Times.
To read more about the conservation coalition in the New York Times, click here.
Posted: 10/27/09
