WASHINGTON (AFP) – A bill to curb greenhouse gases is "one of the most important pieces of legislation" ever before the US Congress, Nobel laureate and champion of the environment, Al Gore, said Friday.
"Passage of this legislation will restore America's leadership of the world and begin, at long last, to solve the climate crisis," said Gore, the former US vice president who won the Nobel Peace Prize for his work on combating global warming.
"It is truly a moral imperative," he told the House Energy and Commerce Committee.
Congress is examining a draft bill for clean energy development that aims to cut carbon emissions by 20 percent from their 2005 levels by 2020, and boost reliance on renewable sources of energy.
Gore, a former lawmaker in both houses of Congress, said the legislation would simultaneously address three major challenges facing the United States: climate change, the economic crisis and national security threats.
"Our country cannot afford more of the status quo, more gasoline price instability, more job losses, more outsourcing of factories, and more years of sending two billion dollars every 24 hours to foreign countries for oil."
The draft bill is set to pass the House of Representatives thanks to a wide Democratic majority there, but its future remains uncertain in the Senate.
Gore said the bill was as important as the civil rights legislation passed by Congress in the 1960s giving African-Americans the right to vote, and the Marshall Plan of the late 1940s for rebuilding Europe after World War II.
But Republicans and some Democrats from coal- or oil-producing states warn of potentially catastrophic economic impacts from setting limits on emissions of greenhouse gases blamed for global warming.
Republican House Minority leader John Boehner said Gore "deserves another Oscar for his testimony today on the Democrats? plans for a massive national energy tax on every American," referring to Gore's Academy Award for his documentary on climate change "An Inconvenient Truth."
"As Mr. Gore spoke to the television cameras in the Committee chamber, news reports indicate that behind the scenes, Democrats are wheeling and dealing, trying to buy votes for this disastrous bill with your taxpayer dollars," Boehner said in a statement.
The White House and the Democratic majority in Congress want the bill completed by the end of the year, with President Barack Obama planning to travel to Copenhagen for a major UN climate change conference in December.
Posts
