The White House continues to push for comprehensive climate legislation that includes a cap-and-trade program for GHG emissions, Greenwire reported. President Obama's top energy advisor, Carol Browner, was quoted as saying: "We think it can be hugely successful in giving us both the environmental gains that we want and we think are important, but also the flexibility and the cost savings to meet the challenge of ... reducing greenhouse gas emissions."
Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., said dropping cap-and-trade provisions was "a horrible idea. If you separate climate from energy reform, you slow your ability to create those clean jobs because every market expert tells you those energy reforms can't take hold unless you price carbon."
Energy & Natural Resources Committee Chairman Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., Agriculture Committee Chairwoman Blanche Lincoln, D-Ark., and Policy Committee Chairman Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., are among the moderate Senate Democrats who have urged the president to relinquish the cap-and-trade system in favor of a stand-alone energy bill. Electricity industry attorney Scott Segal stood with the moderates. He was quoted as saying: "It's not a bad thing to take a short hiatus, pass energy policies, and then refine the assumptions behind an across-the-board climate change policy."
Some major environmental groups, including the National Wildlife Federation, said they would not support a stand-alone energy bill. Not all environmentalists felt that way. Eileen Claussen, president of the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, was quoted as saying: "We'd all prefer a really good economywide cap-and-trade system. But if we can't get that, I don't want to end up with nothing. I want to end up with something that really starts to address this problem."
