Earth Equity News

Sen. Murkowski's Motives Draw Scrutiny. By Darren Samuelsohn, Greenwire, January 15, 2010. "Sen. Lisa Murkowski has built a reputation in her eight years in Washington as a moderate Republican willing to engage with Democrats and environmentalists in the climate change debate. But Murkowski, who last year took on a much higher profile in the GOP leadership, is now at the center of a storm by pushing to strip U.S. EPA of its ability to regulate for greenhouse gas emissions. Murkowski insists that her efforts -- which could come to a head on the Senate floor as early as Wednesday -- are a check on unwieldy and costly rules that could hamstring the recovering economy. And while she is concerned about the effects that climate change is having back home in Alaska, she criticizes the Obama administration and Democrats for using the threat of EPA regulations to bully lawmakers into voting for a much broader global warming bill... Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) yesterday warned that a vote on Murkowski's amendment could end up hamstringing his own attempt to pass a comprehensive energy and climate bill in the spring. For that, experts say Reid will need help from moderate Republicans like Murkowski... As for the broader climate debate, Murkowski has taken a wait-and-see approach. She has praised alternatives to the House-passed bill, including a carbon tax and cap-and-dividend approach that auctions off all of the allowances. But she has also angered environmentalists by linking her position to the stolen e-mails from a U.K.-based research station that many climate skeptics say undermine the credibility of global warming science."