Call to draft legislation capping carbon gases

Canberra Times
Thursday 26/2/2009 Page: 13

President Barack Obama urged Congress yesterday to draft legislation setting market-based caps on the emissions of carbon gases in a landmark move in the United States to combat global warming. "To truly transform our economy, protect our security, and save our planet from the ravages of climate change, we need to ultimately make clean, renewable energy the profitable kind of energy," Mr Obama told lawmakers in his maiden speech to Congress.

"So I ask this Congress to send me legislation that places a market-based cap on carbon pollution and drives the production of more renewable energy in America." The United States is the world's largest emitter of carbon gases, blamed for global warming, yet the previous administration of president George W. Bush walked away from the 1997 Kyoto Protocol aimed at battling climate change.

A carbon-trading system sets a cap on the an-count of pollutants companies can emit and then forces heavy polluters to buy credits from companies that pollute less - creating financial incentives to fight global warming. Such measures to curb gas emissions were fiercely rebuffed by the Bush administration, which argued that it would be too costly for companies to implement.

A day after a new report highlighted that the effect of even slight temperature increases may have been underestimated, Mr Obama said energy was a critical issue for the future of the world's top energy consumer. He pledged it would be one of three key areas - along with health care and education - that he would focus on in his first budget to be laid before US lawmakers in the coming weeks.

The President vowed to pump $US15 billion ($A23 billion) a year into developing technologies like wind energy and solar energy, vowing to double the country's supply of renewable energy in the next three years.

Mr Obama also praised China for making the largest effort in history to turn its economy energy efficient, and warned that the United States - which invented solar technology - was falling behind its competitors in Germany and Japan. "New plug-in hybrids roll of our assembly lines, but they will run on batteries made in Korea," he said. During the US presidential campaign, the notion was kept largely on the back burner as candidates were reluctant to promote the idea of costlier energy at a time when gasoline prices were soaring.