Obama Should Turn to ‘Cap-and-Trade’ for Growth, Boxer Says
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Oct. 4 (Bloomberg) -- President Barack Obama should consider legislation to limit greenhouse gas emissions as he looks for new ways to speed the U.S. economy’s recovery from the recession, said Senator Barbara Boxer, a California Democrat.

Boxer and Senator John Kerry, a Massachusetts Democrat, last week unveiled a “cap-and-trade” proposal to cut U.S. greenhouse gases 20 percent below 2005 levels by 2020. In June, the House passed a cap-and-trade plan with a 17 percent cut.

After the Labor Department reported that the U.S. unemployment rate hit 9.8 percent last month, the highest level since 1983, Obama said he was working to “explore any and all additional” means of spurring growth. Obama signed a $787 billion stimulus package in February.

Asked on CNN’s “State of the Union” what extra steps the White House should take to stimulate the economy, Boxer said “it could be moving forward with an energy bill.”

Since cap-and-trade legislation, allowing the federal government to issue a limited number of carbon dioxide permits that firms could buy and sell, passed the House 219-212 in June, it has taken a back seat to the debate over health-care reform in the Senate.

Environmentalists want Congress to pass and Obama to sign a cap-and-trade bill before December, when the United Nations will host more than 190 nations in Copenhagen for negotiations over a new global agreement to cut emissions.

Carol Browner, the White House’s top energy adviser, said Oct. 2 a cap-and-trade bill signing is “not likely” before the Copenhagen talks, despite Obama’s support for the concept.

Venture Capital

Venture capitalists “are ready to pour multibillions of dollars into clean energy” if Congress passes “some kind of bill that talks about energy independence and climate change,” Boxer said.

Advocates of cap-and-trade have said it is less costly for industry than the Environmental Protection Agency requiring firms to use less-polluting energy technologies.

The EPA said Sept. 30, the same day Boxer and Kerry announced their cap-and-trade bill, that it will require newly built or modified industrial facilities that produce more than 25,000 tons of carbon dioxide a year to use “best available control technologies and energy efficiency measures.”

Rather than stimulate the economy through investments in cleaner energy sources, Republicans have said cap-and-trade will raise the cost of the existing sources that fuel the economy and hinder growth.

“Don’t be pushing bills like cap-and-trade, which are big job killers,” Senator Jon Kyl, an Arizona Republican, said on the same CNN program as Boxer.

The Boxer-Kerry cap-and-trade bill also has critics within the Democratic Party. Senator Jay Rockefeller, a West Virginia Democrat, said Sept. 30 the bill’s 20 percent cut in emissions by 2020 is “unrealistic and harmful.”