Today, Domenici and his committee host 29 corporate executives, scientists, economists and environmentalists to discuss a mandatory cap on greenhouse-gas emissions. It promises to be the most serious conversation in Congress to date about dealing with climate change.
Once considered a Cassandra cry of the environmental left, concern about global warming is drawing lawmakers into a thorny debate over how the nation gets its energy and how much it is willing to sacrifice to avoid potentially serious impacts. If emissions and temperatures increase as high as some simulations of future climate suggest, scientists say polar melting could raise sea levels 20 feet, flood coastal cities and halt deep ocean currents moving warmth and marine nutrients around the globe. Storms and wildfires could become more severe. Ecosystems and arable lands would shift, and humanity could face significant costs adapting to a less stable world.
EDIT
The Bush administration worked last spring and summer to dissuade the Senate from global warming legislation, and Domenici agreed not to regulate carbon in the energy policy act. Despite White House pressure, a dozen Republicans made a Senate majority in late June that declared global temperatures were rising abnormally and that humans appeared partly to blame. The Senate backed mandatory greenhouse-gas reductions, as long as those did not ``significantly harm'' the U.S. economy and brought other nations on board.
Domenici has said that no global warming legislation will make it through his committee this year, and House lawmakers are at least a year behind the Senate.
ED. - Oh, thank GOD!!!!
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http://www.insidebayarea.com/oaklandtribune/ci_3670912Gosh, how special. And maybe after another ten or fifteen years of study, they'll be psychologically prepared to pass a toothless bill. Won't that just be a
wonderful day?
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