Obama climate policy caught in Democratic tussle

Dina Cappiello | The Associated Press

A fight within the Democratic Party over control of the powerful Energy and Commerce Committee in the House of Representatives could influence the outcome of President-elect Barack Obama’s efforts to cap the heat-trapping gases blamed for global warming.

Obama has said he wants to act quickly on climate change, but crucial bipartisan support could be tested if liberal California Rep. Henry Waxman succeeds at unseating Chairman John Dingell of Michigan, the panel’s top Democrat for 28 years and a major ally of automakers and electric utilities.

The winner will be at the helm of a panel that will spearhead a bill to cap greenhouse gases and establish a multibillion-dollar market in carbon dioxide, with companies buying and selling rights to pollute.

Last month Dingell and Rep. Rick Boucher, also a Democrat, offered a draft global warming bill based on dozens of hearings and white papers for reducing greenhouse gases by 80 percent by 2050, a reduction in line with what Obama has proposed.

Environmentalists and some liberal Democrats, however, see Dingell as an obstacle to stricter fuel economy standards for cars and trucks and cleaner fuels also advocated by Obama.

They see in Waxman, whose district includes swank and liberal Beverly Hills in Los Angeles, an opportunity to push through a more ambitious environmental agenda now that Democrats have expanded their majorities in Congress and will take over the White House.

“We have lost a tremendous amount of time. Rep. Dingell has always opposed bringing the energy and transportation sectors into a more efficient and modern era,” said a senior Democratic aide for a member who supports Waxman’s coup. The aide spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of challenging Dingell, at 82 the longest serving member in the House and one of its biggest power brokers for a quarter-century.

But Dingell’s supporters say his global warming draft legislation has a better chance of winning support from some Republicans and conservative Democrats, many of them on his 57-member committee, because it slowly reduces emissions to buy time for necessary technology to develop.

Liberals and environmentalists complain that Dingell’s bill could pre-empt states such as California, which have set up their own carbon trading systems, and forbid the Environmental Protection Agency and state agencies from setting fuel economy standards different from those adopted by the U.S. Transportation Department.

“The prospects for success will be much better under Chairman Dingell on this issue and many others,” said Boucher, who chairs the energy panel’s air quality subcommittee.

Democratic Rep. Mike Doyle, who was working the phones to drum up support for Dingell, said claims by Waxman supporters that Dingell would not move climate legislation quickly were “not based in reality.”

“This climate change bill is not a slam-dunk,” said Doyle. “It is not like we have overwhelming votes in the House and Senate.”

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Majority Leader Steny Hoyer have thus far avoided taking sides. Obama’s camp also is staying out of it.

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Forest Service unveils effort to tackle climate change, preserve woodlands

 

By TOM KNUDSON – McClatchy Newspapers

RENO, Nev. – U.S. Forest Service Chief Gail Kimbell Friday unveiled a new agencywide effort to tackle the problem of climate change, saying it poses the greatest danger yet to the nation’s woodlands.

“This issue is so big,” Kimbell said in an interview at the national convention of the Society of American Foresters in Reno, Nev. “The health and resilience of America’s forests affect everyone.”

The goal is to respond to climate change broadly, she said, from helping forests adapt to warmer, drier conditions to reducing the agency’s carbon footprint by stepping up its purchase of alternative fuel vehicles.

Though short on specifics, the agency’s plan – unveiled at the convention on Friday – comes against a backdrop of declining forest health and increasing environmental damage from wildfires across the Sierra Nevada and the mountain West, Kimbell said.

“We’ve been seeing bigger fires, wilder fires, more intense fires,” she said. “Fire seasons that start in January in the southern United States end in December in California – and then start all over again.

“We believe it’s tied to … climate change,” Kimbell added.

Insects, too, take advantage of warmer conditions to wreak havoc on conifer stands in the northern Rockies, she said.

The Society of American Foresters is the nation’s leading scientific and educational organization for the forestry profession. Its Reno conference, entitled “Forestry in a Climate of Change,” brought together forestry professionals and academics.

“The problem is not climate change,” said conference-goer John Helms, past president of the society and a retired University of California at Berkeley forestry professor. “The problem is the rate of climate change. We are increasing the rate of change faster than normal evolutionary processes.”

One cornerstone of the Forest Service plan – which the agency calls a “Strategic Framework for Climate Change” – relies heavily on science to shape agency decisions. Another calls for developing strategies to help forests soak up and store more carbon dioxide, the atmospheric gas most responsible for global warming.

“This is a much different issue than we or other agencies have grappled with,” said David Cleaves, the Forest Service’s associate deputy chief for research and development. “We need to do it right.”