Merkel urges Congress to act on climate
Partisan divide that greeted German leader also seen on Senate bill

By Juliet Eilperin
Wednesday, November 4, 2009

German Chancellor Angela Merkel urged Congress and the Obama administration Tuesday to take bold steps to address global warming, even as Senate Democrats and Republicans feuded over whether to press ahead with a climate bill.

Speaking at a joint meeting of Congress, Merkel described climate change as one of the "great tests" of the 21st century. She took pains to compliment lawmakers and the administration for viewing "the protection of our climate to be a very important task," even as she suggested that they move faster.

"We all know we have no time to lose," she said.

While the entire Democratic side gave those remarks a standing ovation, most Republicans -- including key swing voters, such as Sen. Richard G. Lugar (Ind.) -- remained in their seats. When Merkel added that curbing greenhouse gas emissions would spur growth in "innovative" jobs worldwide, the same partisan divide marked lawmakers' reaction.

Merkel tried to assuage lawmakers' concerns that any agreement coming out of international climate talks in Copenhagen next month would not include binding commitments from China and India, saying those nations will make serious emissions cuts once the leaders of industrialized nations "show ourselves ready to adopt binding commitments."

"In December the world will look to us, to the Europeans and to the Americans," she said.

A GOP boycott

Merkel's remarks came shortly after lawmakers faced off at the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee's markup of its climate legislation.

All 12 committee Democrats were present Tuesday morning to take up the bill co-authored by Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) and the committee's chairman, Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.). The only Republican to appear, Sen. George V. Voinovich (Ohio), spoke for 15 minutes about the seven-member minority's opposition to the proceedings.

Republicans complain that the Environmental Protection Agency has not done a full-scale economic analysis of the Kerry-Boxer bill. Democrats respond that the measure is largely based on a House-passed climate bill, which has undergone such a study, and that the EPA has calculated how the Senate bill's changes would affect its overall cost.

The Kerry-Boxer bill aims to reduce the nation's greenhouse gas emissions to 20 percent below 2005 levels by 2020. It would do so by forcing industrial operations to buy and sell pollution permits, the number of which would shrink over time.

In the committee room, Democrats decried the Republicans' absence.

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) noted that the bill would change significantly as it made its way to the floor, making any immediate EPA analysis obsolete. And Sen. Benjamin L. Cardin (D-Md.) suggested that GOP lawmakers search the Internet if they need to learn more about the current bill.

"We've got enough information. We've got plenty of information, and we're ready to make decisions," Cardin said. "We live in a world that is being poisoned by greenhouse gases of our own making."

But Voinovich, his voice cracking with emotion at one point, pleaded with his colleagues to, out of "just decency," let the EPA run a more thorough computer modeling with different inputs and assumptions that he had requested.

"This is not something on my part that I'm trying to con you out of," he told them, saying the committee Republican boycott was "not a ruse."

But Boxer, who invited EPA officials to brief the committee Tuesday afternoon on the agency's abbreviated analysis of the Senate bill, said the panel was ready to move forward.

"We're just going to be here every day until they join us," she told her fellow Democrats, before leaving to listen to Merkel's speech. "The reason they gave not to work on it just doesn't hold up to the light of day."

Despite the GOP boycott of the markup, Kerry said, "we're absolutely proceeding forward. We're continuing to work."

Kerry sees momentum

The committee markup and the appearance by Merkel have helped to keep momentum behind the push for climate legislation, Kerry suggested, adding that he met Tuesday with the prime minister of Sweden as well as the German chancellor.

On Wednesday, Kerry said, he and Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) are scheduled to meet with a host of administration officials, including White House climate-change adviser Carol M. Browner and Energy Secretary Steven Chu, to "ascertain the administration's parameters" for the climate bill, particularly on the subject of nuclear energy.

"Obviously it's pushed back," Kerry said of the timeline for finishing a bill. "But that's okay."

The prospects of enacting a Senate bill got a tiny boost Tuesday when R. Bruce Josten, the chief lobbyist for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, sent a letter to Boxer and the committee's ranking Republican, James M. Inhofe (Okla.), suggesting that a bipartisan approach along the lines of the compromise Kerry is trying to forge with Graham might work.

"The challenge of drafting comprehensive climate legislation is not 'whether' to do something, but 'how,' " Josten wrote.

It remains unclear whether the missive will translate into a shift in the trade association's policy, however. Jeremy Symons, senior vice president of the National Wildlife Federation, said he remains "cautious," given the chamber's historic opposition to mandatory limits on greenhouse gases.

Staff writer Ben Pershing contributed to this report.