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January 9, 2003

McCain and Lieberman Offer Bill to Require Cuts in Gases

By KATHARINE Q. SEELYE

WASHINGTON, Jan. 8 — At a packed committee hearing, Senators John McCain, Republican of Arizona, and Joseph I. Lieberman, Democrat of Connecticut, joined forces today to challenge the Bush administration on global warming.

The two former — and possibly future — political rivals to President Bush and each other offered their bill to reduce the emissions of heat-trapping gases, saying the administration was stuck in neutral on that crucial environmental matter.

"The United States is responsible for 25 percent of the worldwide greenhouse gas emissions," Mr. McCain, chairman of the Science, Commerce and Transportation Committee, said as he opened the hearing. "It is time for the United States government to do its part to address this global problem, and a discussion of mandatory reductions is the form of leadership that is required."

That assertion was a direct challenge to Mr. Bush, whose approach relies on voluntary reductions, and it guaranteed that the McCain-Lieberman bill would face stiff opposition, particularly after next week, when Mr. Lieberman is to announce that he is seeking the Democratic nomination for president next year.

The bill, forged with advice from industry and environmental groups, would require that by 2010 industries cut emissions of carbon dioxide to 2000 levels and by 2016 to 1990 levels.

It would create a "cap and trade" system under which companies that failed to meet the goals could buy "credits" from companies that exceeded them, an approach used to reduce acid rain. The program would apply to electric utilities, industrial plants, transportation and large commercial enterprises, which were responsible for 85 percent of emissions in 2000 in the United States.

The administration declined to join the Kyoto treaty on climate change, even though last year Mr. Bush accepted findings by a panel of American experts that human activity had caused most of the global warming in recent decades.

Mr. Bush set a policy that until 2012 would rely on voluntary measures by industries to slow growth in emissions of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases. He said more research was needed to clarify the potential environmental risks of warming before taking stronger measures, although White House officials said recently that they might speed their timetable in seeking compliance.

Today, the White House was unenthusiastic about the McCain-Lieberman approach.

A spokesman, Scott McClellan, said: "We're already making great progress on the president's common-sense plan to significantly reduce the growth in greenhouse-gas emissions and working with Congress to pass the most significant reduction in power-plant emissions ever."

Senator James M. Inhofe, the Oklahoma Republican who is chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee, said the causes of global warming were still open to question. He indicated that he had a fundamental difference with the McCain-Lieberman approach by noting that the Congressional Budget Office had found that cap-and-trade programs amounted to "an energy tax on consumers."

Many people at the hearing rejected the idea that the White House was doing something serious about global warming and criticized the administration for saying it needed to do more research.

Mr. Lieberman, the first witness, said the administration's approach would "allow greenhouse-gas emissions to keep increasing indefinitely, presenting this country and the world with a bigger and bigger environmental crisis to tackle down the road," hurting the economy and America's stature in the world.

Of his bill, he said, "we do less than is explicitly called for under the Kyoto agreement, but we sure do a lot more than nothing."

Speaking for the administration at the hearing was James R. Mahoney, assistant commerce secretary and deputy administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Dr. Mahoney said, "We do have evidence of global change," but he added, "There are substantial uncertainties about causes, and because of that uncertainty about causes, there's also substantial uncertainty about mitigation methods that might be effective."

He said the administration was spending $1.7 billion on research. Dr. Mahoney also announced that the White House would be the host of an international Earth Observation Summit this summer to discuss climate change.

And he warned that the McCain-Lieberman approach of mandatory reductions in gases would lead to "years of litigation."

Mr. McCain said a voluntary approach did not "meet the urgency" of the threat from global warming.

Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon, was more dismissive.

"I don't think these workshops are going to cut it," Mr. Wyden told Dr. Mahoney, asking him what event, "short of flooding the National Mall," would persuade the administration that global warming was a serious problem.

Dr. Mahoney said that was above his pay grade, but offered that the administration had to worry about the "economic dislocation" caused by any mandatory program.

The hearing was the first by this committee in the new Congress, a sign that Mr. McCain wanted to make a statement. That statement, his opponents said, was that he and Mr. Lieberman were posturing.

"This was a political statement," said Frank Maisano, representing the Business Coalition on Global Warming, who predicted widespread opposition to the bill. "It's so broad, and it covers so many people and it would be so complex and complicated. It's too burdensome for anyone to fathom."

Representatives of environmental groups were thrilled with the McCain-Lieberman approach.

"It's a very big event that McCain and Lieberman would open up with this," David Doniger of the Natural Resources Defense Council said.


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