WSJ: Obama Officials Urge Cap on Greenhouse Gases
Top officials from the Obama administration are urging members of Congress to pass legislation capping U.S. greenhouse-gas emissions, warning that failure to do so would exacerbate climate change and risk ceding jobs in innovative, low-carbon industries to other countries, according to copies of their prepared testimony.
The comments from Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson, Energy Secretary Steven Chu and Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood come as members of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce are wading into a potentially lengthy struggle over how to distribute the costs associated with reducing U.S. emissions of greenhouse gases, and what to do with the billions of dollars in government revenue that could be raised by putting a price on carbon emissions for the first time.
“The ‘no, we can’t’ crowd will spin out doomsday scenarios about runaway costs,” Ms. Jackson, the EPA chief, says in her prepared remarks. “But EPA’s available economic modeling indicates that the investment Americans would make to implement the cap-and-trade program of the [Waxman proposal] would be modest compared to the benefits that science and plain common sense tell us a comprehensive energy and climate policy will deliver.”
WSJ
4/22/9
Magnolia Tribune
