posted by System Administrator on 11/21/06

Leadership changes in key Congressional commitees point toward a dramatic shift in US energy policies, none more so than the replacement of Oklahoma Republican James Inhofe as chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee by California Democrat Barbara Boxer. "Nowhere is there a greater threat to future generations than the disastrous effects of global warming," Boxer said at a Senate Democratic Caucus meeting. "One of my top priorities will be to spotlight this issue ... with the goal of ultimately bringing legislation to the Senate floor."

According to an article at Salon.com By Amanda Griscom Little, Boxer has promised to hold "extensive hearings" on climate change, and outlined plans to model federal legislation after the new California law that aims to reduce planet-warming emissions 25 percent by 2020. It's a radical departure from the approach of Inhofe, who once called global warming the "greatest hoax ever perpetrated on mankind."

Democratic Sen. Jeff Bingaman, who will bump fellow New Mexican Pete Domenici, a Republican, from the helm of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, is also expected to push for action on climate change, as well as on stronger auto fuel-economy standards, a requirement that a percentage of the nation's electricity come from renewable sources, a boost in R&D funding for renewable energy, and reductions in oil and gas subsidies. Earlier this week, Bingaman joined Boxer and Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman in sending a letter to the White House exhorting the president to "work with the new Congress to pass meaningful climate-change legislation in 2007."

On the House side, incoming Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif. -- who boasts a 92 percent lifetime voting score from the League of Conservation Voters -- has made rolling back roughly $4 billion of oil and gas subsidies doled out in the 2005 energy bill a key goal for the first 100 hours of the new Congress, according to her deputy press secretary, Drew Hammill.

In July, Pelosi signed on as a cosponsor of tough climate legislation introduced by Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif.; it aims to slash greenhouse-gas emissions 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050. Hammill says Pelosi will continue to support the bill. "In the new Congress, we expect there to be extensive, long-overdue hearings on climate change, which will inform the development of legislation on climate change in the 110th Congress and build upon the ideas put forward by Mr. Waxman and others," he told Muckraker.

Rep. Nick Rahall, D-W.Va., who's in line to replace environmental bête noire Richard Pombo, R-Calif., as chairman of the House Resources Committee, will put the kibosh on Pombo's plans to undermine endangered-species protections, to drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and to open public lands to private development.

Enviros are more ambivalent about Democratic Michigan Rep. John Dingell's return to the helm of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. (Dingell, who is 80, is the longest-serving member of the House and chaired the committee from 1981 to 1995.) A strong supporter of cleaning up Superfund sites, Dingell has also voiced intentions to investigate corporate influence behind both Vice President Dick Cheney's secretive energy task force and the fossil-fuel subsidies doled out in last year's energy bill."  Read the rest of the article here.

Source: Salon.com article by Amanda Griscom Little "Green Gidlock" 11-20-06