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Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) said Thursday that she
would introduce legislation next year to turn President-elect Barack Obama’s
goals for clean energy and global warming into reality. Boxer, who chairs the Environment and Public Works
Committee, stated that the new bill would be more “streamlined” than a climate
bill she unsuccessfully tried to push through the Senate last summer. The
senator acknowledged that the complexity of the earlier effort helped undermine
support.
She provided few details as to what would be covered in
the legislation, other than to say that it would be “much simpler.” The new
bill will, however, also cap emissions and set up a system for emitters to
trade allowance credits, as the previous bill would have done.
Boxer said her committee would work in “strong
partnership” with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) under an Obama
administration. Boxer has often clashed with the current EPA leaders, in
particular over the agency’s refusal to allow California to proceed with a plan
to cap emissions in the state. She said she hoped that one of Obama’s first
acts as president would be to grant California permission to implement its
plan.
Boxer also stated that she would introduce a bill to
provide $15 billion a year in support for a clean energy program that supports
wind, solar, geothermal and other renewable energy sources. Money would also be
spent on developing technologies to capture and store the carbon dioxide released
from coal plants, which are a major contributor to the greenhouse gas emissions
humans are responsible for releasing into the atmosphere.
Such a bill would represent a huge increase in the amount
of money dedicated to clean energy, and there remains the question of how
Congress will raise the money. As part of her sales pitch, Boxer spent as much
time talking about the economic benefits of the plan as she did about the
environmental good that it would do.
“The first thing we all think about today is job creation
and fighting this recession,” Boxer said. Clean energy means green jobs, she
added, quoting a study that projected green jobs could account for 10 percent
of projected job growth over the next 30 years.
In addition to expressing optimism at a newfound
cooperation at the EPA for her efforts, Boxer also praised the election of
Henry Waxman, a fellow California Democrat, as chairman of the House Energy and
Commerce Committee.
Boxer called Waxman a “very, very, very strong ally,” and
said his ascension to the chairmanship signals a “sea change” in terms of how
Congress will view environmental policies.
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