Climate Stewardship and Innovation Act

On January 12, 2007, Presidential hopefuls Senators John McCain (R-AZ) and Barack Obama (D-IL) joined with former Vice Presidential candidate Joe Lieberman (ID-CT) in calling for bold new laws to curb global warming pollution.

The National Wildlife Federation endorses this bill, in particular because it includes measures for wildlife conservation, through funds from global warming polluters.

The new bill sets enforceable, science-based goals to reduce the nation’s greenhouse gas emissions from major sources. The bill gives industry five years to prepare, beginning in 2012 with a requirement that they return their emission levels to recent (2004) levels. This would reverse the current trend of increasing emissions. The bill then requires industry to cut global warming pollution gradually, by about two percent a year, through 2020. The act sets long-term pollution limits as well, eventually cutting emissions by two-thirds by 2050.

The new bill is a significant change from the previous legislation offered by Lieberman and McCain, which also offered a "first installment" to freeze emissions to stop them from growing further until more political support could be garnered for the long-term cuts. Lieberman and McCain have been listening to scientists who say time is running out and half measures are no longer sufficient. In addition to putting in stronger, long-term targets for reducing pollution, the bill has several measures to spur innovation and control any costs, including a commonsense, market-based emissions trading system.

“This sets the stage for the new Congress and 2008 presidential race,” said Larry Schweiger, president & CEO, National Wildlife Federation. “An overwhelming body of science has made it clear that global warming has reached a crisis moment and swift action is needed. This leadership is a hopeful sign that the political ground is shifting toward a focus on real solutions that will get the job done.”

In a sign of the shifting politics of global warming, the new Senate legislation gains support from at least one Senator – Blanche Lincoln (D-AR) – who previously voted against more modest global warming measures. Also co-sponsoring the bill will be Senators Barack Obama and Olympia Snowe (R-ME).

The move is the latest sign that global warming will be a feature in the presidential race in 2008 if a science-based global warming bill is unable to be signed into law this Congress. California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger told The Washington Post earlier this month that, regarding global warming, he wants “to put the spotlight on this issue in America. It has to become a debate in the presidential election. It has to become an issue.” Governor Schwarzenegger recently enacted a plan that also sets bold near-term and long-term limits on global warming pollution. And earlier this month, former Vice President Al Gore helped train hundreds of volunteers to prepare them to crisscross the nation and deliver the slide show that propelled An inconvenient Truth to multi-million DVD and ticket sales. The National Wildlife Federation played a key role in developing this training.

The bill is the latest sign of a growing coalition of key Senators who support science-based goals to curb pollution. Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA), the new chair of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, is expected to re-introduce a measure, also supported by the National Wildlife Federation, which sets a goal of reducing emissions 80 percent by 2050.

Introduction of the Lieberman-McCain bill comes as the new leadership of the House of Representatives is expected to take its first step to combat global warming by stripping federal subsidies away from oil companies and investing it in clean, renewable energy sources.

Scientists and the evidence of daily events tell us the threat of global warming is urgent. As the year began we learned that 25 square miles of the polar ice sheet has sheered off. This, just weeks after news came out that Greenland’s ice sheet is melting at the rate of about a cubic mile a week. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is now considering giving the polar bear Endangered Species Act protection because its habitat is melting away. The majority of the world’s coral reefs could be lost this century if ocean temperatures continue to rise, and cold-water fish such as salmon and trout could go extinct in many rivers and streams if temperatures continue to rise above their threshold.

NASA scientist James Hansen, widely considered the leading American climate expert, has said that a very brief window of opportunity remains to deal with global warming – within the next 10 years, at most.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported that 2006 was the warmest in the continental United States in the past 112 years. According to the government report, this caps a nine-year warming streak “unprecedented in the historical record.”

This legislation comes just in time. It provides an opportunity to show the American public that Congress has heard them loud and clear and is taking action on global warming, an issue they care deeply about.