Earth Equity News

Gore Testifies Before Senate Foreign Relation Committee. By Juliet Eilperin, WashPost, January 29, 2009. "Former vice president Al Gore urged lawmakers today to adopt a binding carbon cap and push for a new international climate pact by the end of this year in order to avert catastrophic global warming. Appearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Gore delivered a short slide show that amounted to an update of ...An Inconvenient Truth... Gore didn't sugarcoat his message to senators today. Although politicians including President Obama have touted the importance of exploring 'clean coal technology,' the former vice president said it would not be available for years: 'We must avoid becoming vulnerable to the illusion that this is near at hand. It is not'... Indiana Sen. Richard Lugar, the committee's top Republican, asked Gore to draw on his experience as 'a practicing politician' to explain how senators could muster a broad bipartisan majority for any international treaty that could come out of Copenhagen at the end of the year... [Gore] said the chances of a treaty passing the Senate should be boosted by developing countries' willingness to embrace binding climate goals, coupled with the new scientific evidence of recent warming. Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), who supports a carbon tax rather than a cap-and-trade system, said he thought the only way to construct a bipartisan coalition on climate change was to be honest about what it means to curb greenhouse gas emissions. 'I think we can build consensus around transparency,' Corker said, adding that when it comes to addressing global warming, 'We're really talking about increasing the price of carbon.'"