The heavily negotiated Waxman-Markey climate bill lost the support of one of the world's most powerful environmental groups today. "We cannot support this bill in its current state," Greenpeace Executive Director Phil Radford announced a few hours after Reps. Henry Waxman and Ed Markey formally introduced their American Climate and Energy Security Act.  Two weeks of intense negotiations with coal- and industrial-state Democrats, each demanding changes in exchange for their votes, had skinned much of the value from the plan. The bill introduced today as HR 2454 still has a cap-and-trade structure and a renewable electricity standard, but both have been considerably weakened from the initial proposal, which was already based on a compromise between big businesses and environmental groups. It also falls far short of what science recommends to protect the climate. read more

less than 270 day(s) - Saturday May,16 2009 @ 02:11 AM
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