 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
Obama has no power to make climate deal: US lawmaker
Washington (AFP) Dec 13, 2009 US President Barack Obama is heading to the Copenhagen climate talks with empty promises on curbing US greenhouse gas emissions that he cannot fulfill, a top lawmaker said Sunday. "He doesn't have that power to do that. And people in other countries don't realize that," Republican Senator James Inhofe, a leading critic of global warming legislation, told Fox News Sunday. Inhofe said he wanted to press the message home in the final week of the Copenhagen conference that Obama will not be able to follow through on a pledge to cut emissions by 17 percent by 2020 off 2005 levels as he will not get the necessary legislation through Congress. "That's (the) reason I'm going, to make sure people in these other 191 countries know the president can't do that," Inhofe said. The House of Representatives in June narrowly approved a plan to cut carbon emissions along those lines, but the legislation is now stuck in the Senate, which is not going to take it up again until next year. It is likely to face stiff opposition from Republicans, who with their allies in big business, fear the costs of implementing emissions cuts will hit profit margins. "It's dead on arrival at the floor," said Inhofe. "Everybody knows that. "And we're not going to have legislation. So it has to come down to what can the president do without legislation. And I think that is highly limited." But Democratic Congressman Ed Markey, the author of the House cap-and-trade bill, said he believed there was an impetus towards sealing a deal to curb emissions by imposing limits on industry. "There is real momentum now building for a bipartisan bill to pass through the United States Senate," he told Fox News Sunday. He disagreed with Infohe saying the president had the authority to make commitments to tackle global warming now the administration has decreed that greenhouse gases endanger public health. The US government said earlier this month it would start to regulate carbon dioxide as a dangerous pollutant, sidestepping the divided Congress. The decision paves the way for the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to issue standards on how much carbon US factories, buildings and cars can emit, even though legislation has yet to pass through the Congress. Share This Article With Planet Earth
Related Links
EU pledges climate funds; US sees 'imbalance'Copenhagen (AFP) Dec 11, 2009 The European Union on Friday pledged 7.2 billion euros (10.6 billion dollars) to help poor nations battle global warming, as the United States challenged as "unbalanced" key elements of an official draft proposal at the UN climate talks. The European funding, to be spent over three years, ramps up pressure on rich countries to do more at the summit where a text of a draft statement sets a ta ... read more |
|
|
| The content herein, unless otherwise known to be public domain, are Copyright 1995-2009 - SpaceDaily. AFP and UPI Wire Stories are copyright Agence France-Presse and United Press International. ESA Portal Reports are copyright European Space Agency. All NASA sourced material is public domain. Additional copyrights may apply in whole or part to other bona fide parties. Advertising does not imply endorsement,agreement or approval of any opinions, statements or information provided by SpaceDaily on any Web page published or hosted by SpaceDaily. Privacy Statement |
del.icio.us
Digg
Reddit
YahooMyWeb
Google
Facebook