Congressman urges Obama to travel to climate conference

Rep. Bob Filner (D-Calif.) urged President Barack Obama to travel to the U.N. climate conference in December and advocate for more stringent limits on carbon emissions.

The White House has indicated that the president will not travel to the Copenhagen conference. The summit conflicts with Obama's Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech in Olso. Senior White House officials suggested that Obama will use that speech to speak about the subject. 

Filner, who sits on the Transportation and Infrastructure Subcommittee on Water Resources and Environment, spoke today on a conference call with the Citizens Climate Lobby, a group of environmental activists. He announced that he and Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) will circulate a letter in the House next week calling upon Obama to push for a 350 parts per million carbon dioxide limit. Some scientists say the atmosphere's carbon level must return to 350 ppm or less to reverse global warming.

"By agreeing to the goal of 350 ppm," Filner said in the letter, "nations will craft the policies and solutions to meet this challenge, just as America once met the challenge of sending a human being to the moon. And by meeting this challenge we will allow our children and grandchildren to inherit the kind of world that we ourselves have been so blessed to enjoy."

The House passed cap-and-trade climate legislation in June that requires a 17 percent reduction of emissions from 2005 levels by 2020. Counterpart legislation has been introduced in the Senate, but the bill will likely not receive final consideration until 2010.