Republicans block climate change bill

WASHINGTON (AFP) - US lawmakers blocked a sweeping climate change bill Friday, after Republican warnings of high energy costs dashed Democrats' hopes for pollution caps under President George W Bush's administration.

Environmentalists looked ahead to the November election for the next opportunity for legislative change, after the much-anticipated bill met a swift demise in the Senate following a week of partisan bickering.

By a vote of 48-36, the bill fell short of the 60 votes needed to bring it to a final debate, after Republicans argued that it would be too expensive to the US economy and the White House vowed a veto.

The legislation, known as the Lieberman-Warner bill after its sponsors, Senators Joe Lieberman and John Warner, called for a "cap and trade" system that would limit harmful emissions and reward environmentally friendly companies by forcing polluters to buy credits from greener industries.

Leading Democrats expressed frustration at the bill's collapse and accused Republicans of exacerbating the problem.

"Given the opportunity to solve the urgent energy and economic crises of today and environmental crises of tomorrow, they ran away from the debate," said Democratic Senate majority leader Harry Reid. Backers of the legislation said it would create a spate of new jobs and re-position the United States, a top world polluter, as a leader in the global fight against climate change.

Democratic Senator Barbara Boxer, chair of the Environment and Public Works Committee, had said the bill would help break the United States' "addiction to oil" and accused opponents of trying to protect the interests of big oil.

Bush and Senate Republicans forecast spiking fuel and electricity costs.

Bush predicted it "would impose roughly six trillion dollars of new costs on the American economy," and was the "wrong way to proceed," while his spokeswoman Dana Perino said he would veto "if it passed in its current form."

Debate on the bill began Monday and within days observers said it was doomed to fail.

Energy industry advocates hailed the procedural motion to end debate on the bill as sign of shoddy legwork on the part of legislators.

"This mad dash to cram debate into a few days seemed to be governed by the politics of the moment, rather than any belief that the bill was really ready for final passage," said Scott Seagal of the Electric Reliability Coordinating Council.

Any future bill must have an "adequate cost-containment mechanism, including a safety-valve that sets a reasonable carbon price designed to protect the environment and the economy" and "ensure that the developing world will undertake comparable action to that required in America," he said. However, Sierra Club spokesman Josh Dorner accused the Republicans of preferring to "play procedural games than having a real and open debate about global warming."

Backers of the bill also sought to link the policies of presumptive Republican White House nominee John McCain to those of President Bush.

"Frankly we are disappointed that Senator McCain, who professes an interest in this issue, could not convince the leadership of a party that he leads to get serious about this and try to legislate on this issue," said Sandretti.

Reid also blasted McCain, who has sought to distance himself from Bush on climate issues, for being absent for the vote. "Senator McCain says global warming is one of his top issues, but when he has the chance to do something about it, he doesn't even show up to work."