White House talks up climate bill chances

The White House yesterday signalled that it has not yet given up hope of passing a climate bill before the Copenhagen Summit in December, as it emerged that a key Republican Senator could be willing to back the controversial legislation.

Speaking at an event in London, energy secretary Steven Chu said he remained optimistic that a climate bill setting binding emission targets could be passed within the next two months.

"Whether there will be a bill on the President's desk and he will sign it...I am hopeful it will be," Chu said. "It will be tight (but) there is a good shot. "

His comments were echoed by Barbara Boxer, one of the Democrat senators behind the Boxer-Kerry climate bill, which was unveiled last month as an alternative to the Waxman-Markey bill passed by the House of Representatives earlier this year, and which sets a more ambitious target of cutting emissions 20 per cent by 2020. She told reporters that she was confident the bill would soon pass through the Senate's Environment and Public Works Committee, which she chairs, and that there was still a chance it would be on the Senate floor before Copenhagen.

The comments mark a change in tone from the White House after Carol Browner, head of the US Environmental Protection Agency, signalled earlier this month that she did not expect the bill to pass this year, and President Obama was quoted as having told world leaders that the final agreement on Copenhagen may have to be delayed until next year.

However, according to various reports, White House officials have been holding a series of meetings with the key Democrat and Republican Senators who are likely to decide the fate of the bill. Moreover, there were signs this weekend that those meetings might be paying off when Republican Senator Lindsey Graham broke ranks to co-write a lengthy opinion piece for the New York Times alongside Democrat Senator John Kerry in which he signalled that he could support a climate bill.

The two Senators said that they had "found both a framework for climate legislation to pass Congress and the blueprint for a clean-energy future that will revitalise our economy, protect current jobs and create new ones, safeguard our national security and reduce pollution", adding that they would now work together to try to find the 60 votes needed in the Senate to pass the legislation.

They explained that they had developed a compromise package that addresses concerns of Republicans and Democrats by proposing a floor and ceiling price on the cost of carbon allowances in any cap-and-trade scheme, authorising significant increases in investment in clean coal and nuclear technologies as well as renewables, and outlining plans for a potential carbon border tax on imports from countries that fail to sign up to environmental standards.

The US has come under intense pressure during recent talks designed to lay the groundwork for a successor to the Kyoto Protocol on climate change to be finalised at the meeting in Copenhagen. Negotiators have consistently argued that the passage of a US climate bill would significantly increase the chances of a deal being reached by indicating to poorer nations that the US is serious about curbing emissions.