Global Warming Bill

To the Editor:

“Another Failure on Climate Change,” the June 11 editorial about the recent Senate debate on global warming legislation, was off the mark.

Questioning the scheduling of the debate because of high gas prices makes little sense. If gas prices don’t go down, should we never address global warming? Of course not.

Many Republicans used gas prices as a reason not to act, even though the long-term solution to gas prices lies in the new green technologies that will come to the fore once we do act.

In addition, our bill sets aside more than $2 trillion that can be used for consumer relief for energy costs. The economic modeling of our bill indicates a very small (2 cents per gallon) increase in gas prices per year over the 38-year life of the bill, which will be largely offset by new fuel economy requirements.

The editorial also suggests that economic issues should have been the subject of more hearings on the bill. Before the global warming legislation hit the Senate floor, dozens of hearings were held, many focused on economic issues.

Finally, the editorial questioned why we included language ensuring that the global warming bill was deficit neutral.

Fighting global warming without increasing the deficit is a key principle of this legislation. If we had not ensured that the bill did not add to the deficit, it could have been held up and not considered further, simply for parliamentary reasons.

Real progress was made last week in focusing the attention of the Senate on this important issue. The 54 senators now on record in support of action add to the momentum we will need to successfully enact landmark legislation.

The Republican leadership’s decision to block consideration of the legislation is a serious obstacle to progress in this Congress. It is also true that landmark legislation is rarely passed overnight.

We started voting on comprehensive global warming legislation five years ago. The last major clean air legislation took nearly 10 years to enact. We must act more quickly on this threat, and I believe we will.

There is an important point in the editorial with which I agree: that presidential leadership will be critical to any solution to global warming, and the next president’s commitment to action must be bold enough to address the problem.

Barbara Boxer
Chairwoman, Senate Committee
on Environment and Public Works
Washington, June 12, 2008