US to act on climate change

WASHINGTON'S climate has changed. Congress, now under the control of the Democrats, is tabling a series of measures to bring man-made climate change - long denied as happening by the Bush administration - into the centre of political life in the United States.

"It's an issue that the Speaker thinks is critical to address," said a spokeswoman for the new Speaker of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi.

Democrats yesterday considered a bill to rein in tax breaks and subsidies for the oil and gas industries - traditionally close to the Bush administration - as part of a Democrat-led effort to increase federal spending on alternative energies. The bill seeks to claw back up to $15 billion (7.6 billion) from "Big Oil" and divert that money to a new Renewable Energy Fund.

The legislation would impose a "conservation fee" on oil and gas taken from the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico, scrap nearly $6 billion worth of oil industry tax breaks enacted by Congress in recent years and seek to recoup royalties lost to the government because of a department of the interior error in leases issued in the late 1990s.

Ms Pelosi also plans to establish a specialist committee to consider other pieces of environmental legislation. The committee will impinge upon the prerogatives traditionally enjoyed by powerful committee chairmen such as John Dingell, the veteran Michigan congressman who is the new chairman of the House energy and commerce committee.

Mr Dingell, who has represented the suburbs of Detroit - Motor City, as it is known - for more than 50 years, and is no friend of Ms Pelosi, has in the past been wary of imposing higher fuel efficiency targets on US car manufacturers, fearing that any such move would harm the interests of his home state.

Dennis Fitzgibbons, the chief of staff to the energy committee and a former car industry lobbyist himself, said that Mr Dingell opposed the Speaker's plans for a new committee. "He has always been cool to the idea, because it undermines the fundamental idea for establishing committees in the first place, which is to acquire expertise in a certain area," he said.

A new committee would give Ms Pelosi a vehicle to push a regulatory scheme for reducing greenhouse gases and pit her against Mr Bush. The president has repeatedly opposed any mandatory reductions in carbon dioxide emissions, instead advocating voluntary approaches and research on new technologies. Ms Pelosi has supported mandatory reductions with specific target dates for achieving them.

Mr Bush will use his State of the Union speech next week to outline a new course on global warming - but few expect it to include much in the way of mandatory targets.

In late December, administration officials conceded that climate change was threatening the world's polar bear population - the first time that it had singled out climate change as a grave threat to the Arctic.

Mr Bush's acknowledgement that action is needed on climate change reflects an increasingly broad consensus in the US that global warming is a real and significant problem.

Last year, Mr Bush admitted that the US is "addicted" to oil; this year he will use his address to promote greater use of ethanol fuel as a substitute for ordinary petrol.

At a meeting with Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, last month the president said he attached great importance to "promoting new technologies that will promote energy efficiency, and at the same time do a better job of protecting the world's environment".

Some scientists and economists have expressed concern that the discussions in Washington are overly focused on emissions caps, with too little attention to greatly expanded government-financed research on non-polluting energy technologies.

Richard Richels, a climate expert and an economist at the Electric Power Research Institute, an organisation in Palo Alto, California, that conducts energy studies for the utility industry, said a carbon dioxide cap would mainly prompt industry to deploy existing cleaner technologies that provide gains, but fail to come close to solving the climate problem.

Mr Richels added that it would not spur long-term investments seeking breakthroughs such as new ways to store intermittent power from wind farms.

• THE global warming message is now even reaching Motor City - Detroit. General Motors releases its first hybrid cars this year, catching up with Japanese manufacturers such as Toyota and Honda that have dominated the market.

Across the country anti-global warming measures are being led by private industry and state governments.

California's governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, has signed a bill requiring drastic cuts in emission rates, while also imposing tougher fuel-efficiency standards for cars sold in the state.

California's senators are also leading proposals that would curb the output of damaging emissions.

Senator Barbara Boxer is writing a bill that would seek an across the board reduction in US emissions to 1990 levels by 2020, while her colleague Dianne Feinstein is exploring a system whereby electricity companies could trade emissions credits.

The Bush administration is also being pressured to take a new approach by its own supporters. Leading evangelical Christians called for more to be done to combat global warming.

"God will judge us for destroying the Creation. Therefore, we as evangelicals have a responsibility to be even more vigilant than others," said the Reverend Rich Cizik, the public policy director for the National Association of Evangelicals.