Washington - The US Senate on Tuesday began what promises to be a long and divisive debate over how to tackle global warming and boost renewable energy sources in the United States. Four top energy officials from President Barack Obama's administration kicked off the Senate debate with testimony before the chamber's environment committee, which will play a key role in crafting the legislation.
The Senate hearing comes ten days after the lower House of Representatives narrowly approved its own climate and energy bill, which for the first time would force US companies to pay for pollutants that are blamed for climate change.
"We face an unprecedented threat to our very way of life from climate change," Energy Secretary Steven Chu said in testimony to the environment committee. "The administration and Congress need to work together to spur a revolution in clean energy technologies."
The climate bill was passed by a wafer-thin 219-212 votes in the House. Passage will likely be even more difficult in the Senate, where a similar effort failed in the final year of president George W Bush's term.
Most Republicans and many Democrats from rural, agriculture-heavy and coal-producing states oppose the legislation out of fear that it will harm local industries and raise energy costs.
"A nation that doesn't have cheap energy is not a nation that will lead the world," said Senator Lamar Alexander, a Republican from Tennessee who is pushing for nuclear power to be revived as an alternative source to fossil fuels.
Senate committees are expected to hammer out a deal by September, but climate groups have warned the bill could lose their already tentative support if it is watered down much further.
"The (House bill) has its defects, some of them substantial," said David Hawkins of the Natural Resources Defense Council. "These should be corrected in the Senate."
The House bill would for the first time create a so-called cap- and-trade system in the United States, an initiative that already exists in Europe and which allocates pollution credits that dirtier and cleaner firms can trade with each other on the open market.
The goal is to reduce US emissions of greenhouse gases by 17 per cent by 2020 and more than 80 per cent by 2050, in line with what most scientists believe is necessary to avoid the worst consequences of climate change.
