WASHINGTON (AP) - New Mexico's two senators laid out a path Thursday toward creating what they hope will become the nation's first mandatory program for trading greenhouse gases in the marketplace.
The technical report by Sens. Pete Domenici, the GOP chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, and Jeff Bingaman, the panel's senior Democrat, is an attempt to make a reality of a nonbinding resolution the Senate passed last year. It called for "mandatory, market-based limits and incentives" on emissions of carbon dioxide, methane and other gases from fossil fuel burning that warm the atmosphere like a greenhouse.
The United States accounts for a quarter of the world's greenhouse gases going into the atmosphere, with emissions growing at the rate of 2 percent a year despite the administration's voluntary climate change policies.
The senators said, "Further Senate action on global warming ... is necessary to move our energy system into a sustainable and predictable future, to avoid destructive interference with the world climate system and to maintain long-term U.S. competitiveness and economic prosperity."
http://apnews1.iwon.com/article/20060203/D8FHED201.html
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