White House meeting aims to kick start US climate bill

President Obama yesterday rolled up his sleeves and waded into the increasingly fractious debate surrounding plans for a US climate bill, gathering key Democrat and Republican senators in a meeting at the White House to discuss how to move the stalled legislation forward.

The meeting, which also included members of Obama's cabinet, reportedly failed to deliver concrete breakthroughs but was still seen as a boost to the chances of passing flagship legislation that many observers believe has been neglected as a result of the White House's focus on passing healthcare reform.

The meeting was attended by the bipartisan trio of Senators – Democrat John Kerry, independent Joe Lieberman, and Republican Lindsey Graham – who have been working on a compromise version of the bill designed to secure the 60 votes necessary for it to pass the Senate.

They did not present the final version of their proposals, which is still expected later this month, but they assured the president that they were making swift progress towards delivering a compromise bill.

"We're moving very rapidly," Kerry told reporters after the White House meeting, adding that a series of further meetings to iron out remaining issues were scheduled for next week.

Significantly, attendees at the meeting said that the president reiterated his desire to see climate change legislation pass this year, and rejected proposals that the administration scale back the bill to focus solely on energy, ditching controversial measures designed to curb carbon emissions and focusing instead on targets for renewable energy generation.

Senator Graham told reporters that proposals from a number of senators, including his fellow Republican Lisa Murkowski, to focus only on the energy part of the bill would not secure support from senators keen to see measures to tackle emissions included which is necessary to reach the crucial 60 vote mark.

A White House spokesman said that the president would throw his weight behind the senators' efforts to secure cross-party support for the legislation.

"The president expressed his strong support for a bipartisan effort to establish clean energy incentives that will create jobs and reduce our dependence on foreign oil," he said. "[The senators] agreed to continue the dialogue about a path forward for comprehensive energy legislation."

Few fresh details were revealed about the shape of the new draft bill, which is widely expected to include increased support for nuclear energy, clean coal technologies and offshore oil drilling, in an attempt to secure support from moderate Republicans.

However, senator Lieberman did reveal that the bill would ditch the term 'cap-and-trade', but could still include a scaled back version of emissions trading focused on the energy sector.

"We don't use that term any more," Lieberman told reporters. "We will have pollution reduction targets."

Cap-and-trade has proved the most divisive element of the bill with many Republican senators characterising it as a "cap-and-tax" scheme, warning that binding limits on emissions for carbon intensive facilities will damage US competitiveness and drive up energy prices.

Democrats have rejected accusations that the scheme would result in job losses, but now appear to be edging towards a compromise that would retain some form of carbon pricing, but would scale back the reach of the scheme and incorporate safeguards designed to ensure that affected firms do not migrate overseas.