Global Warming Debate Shifts to Costs

WASHINGTON -- An international report giving greater certainty to global warming will shift the debate in Congress from what's causing climate change to the economics of who will pay to confront it.

The outcome will sort out winners and losers.

As lawmakers squabble over the details in a half dozen approaches to reducing the flow of heat-trapping "greenhouse" gases from power plants, cars and factories, an overriding political worry hangs over the process: cost and who will foot the bill.

"The debate has clearly shifted from a battle over the science to fighting over the scope and design of the solution," says Jason Grumet, executive director of the National Commission on Energy Policy, a private bipartisan advocacy group on the country's future direction on energy.

The release Friday in Paris of a United Nations report affirming that industrial activities, mainly burning fossil fuels, are largely to blame for a dangerous warming of the earth, will likely spur the climate debate in Congress.

Democrats, joined by a few Republicans, believe mandatory limits on emissions are needed to make any headway toward stabilizing greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere.

To blunt the economic cost of cutting these emissions _ chiefly carbon dioxide from burning oil, coal or natural gas _ the proposals allow for "loopholes" in the mandatory caps: the ability to buy pollution credits if emission reductions get too costly, to save credits for future use if early reductions are cheaper, or "bank" credits and use or sell them later.

One bill, offered by Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., would allow a "safety valve" whereby companies could ignore the emission caps altogether if compliance gets too expensive.

"All of these programs are designed to minimize the cost," says John Larsen, an analyst at the World Resources Institute who has studied the various "cap-and-trade" mechanisms lawmakers are considering.

The Bush administration doesn't like any of them, arguing that arbitrary pollution limits would be too costly, threaten certain carbon-intensive industries and result in lost jobs as business shifts to other countries.

There's worry about "the unintended consequences," Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman said Friday as he made clear the new report by the international panel of scientists hasn't changed the administration's opposition to the "cap-and-trade" approach.

Such systems have not been tested on the scale they would be implemented to deal with climate change, suggested Bodman, adding: "The U.S. economy is not something to be experimented with, in my judgment."