LIMA, Peru, June 19, 2009 (ENS) – A 10-week protest by Peru’s Amazonian indigenous groups against legislation that facilitates development in their region ended yesterday after the Peruvian Congress repealed two legislative decrees. Leaders of the Peruvian Rainforest Inter-Ethnic Development Association, AIDESEP, called upon thousands of indigenous protesters to lift blockades of two highways and return to their villages.

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WASHINGTON, DC, November 21, 2008 (ENS) – The order of business in the incoming 111th Congress is beginning to take shape. When lawmakers convene on January 6, 2009, Democrats will be firmly in control of both houses, although today the outcome of several elections is still unclear.

When Democratic President-elect Barack Obama takes office on January 20, both the White House and Congress will be in Democratic hands for the first time in 16 years.

For the environment, this means that climate change legislation will be on the front burner as soon as the new session opens.

Senator Barbara Boxer of California, who will continue to chair the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, announced Tuesday that she will introduce two pieces of climate legislation in January.

“The first bill will establish a grant program to reduce global warming emissions under the Clean Air Act with up to $15 billion a year available to spur innovations in clean energy, including advanced biofuels,” Boxer said.

Intended as an economic stimulus, Boxer said the bill follows President-elect Barack Obama’s recommendation.

Obama’s short video statement on climate change played at the Governors’ Global Climate Summit convened in California on Tuesday was “music to my ears,” Boxer said.

Obama said, “Few challenges facing America – and the world – are more urgent than combating climate change. The science is beyond dispute and the facts are clear. Sea levels are rising. Coastlines are shrinking. We’ve seen record drought, spreading famine, and storms that are growing stronger with each passing hurricane season.”

“My presidency will mark a new chapter in America’s leadership on climate change that will strengthen our security and create millions of new jobs in the process,” he said.

“Climate change and our dependence on foreign oil, if left unaddressed, will continue to weaken our economy and threaten our national security,” said Obama.

“Clean energy means green jobs,” Boxer said, citing a new report from the U.S. Conference of Mayors estimating that by 2038, another 4.2 million green jobs could be added to the economy.

Boxer also will propose a bill amending the Clean Air Act that directs the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to set up a cap-and-trade system for greenhouse gases that meets the goals laid out by the president-elect.

“This bill will reflect the strong partnership we will have with the new administration, and will focus on achieving the emissions reductions needed while restoring the economy,” said Boxer.

Boxer also announced her committee’s first hearing in the 111th Congress. “The hearing will take place as soon as possible after we convene in January, and will be entitled “How Fighting Global Warming is Good for the Economy and Will Create Jobs,” she said.

Senate Democrats will have to contend with Republican Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma, the ranking member of the Environment and Public Works Committee and a climate change denier. In his blog on the committee website, Inhofe claims that the planet is cooler now than when President George W. Bush took office and that Arctic ice is growing, not shrinking.

Over in the House of Representatives, the Democratic Caucus Thursday elected California Democrat Henry Waxman as chairman of the Committee on Energy and Commerce.

He replaces Michigan Congressman John Dingell, who has served for the past 28 years as chairman and ranking member of the committee. Dingell now will serve as chairman emeritus, but Waxman’s ascendency marks a shift away from the influence of the Detroit auto industry and towards cleaner energy and climate concerns.

Waxman said, “Some of the most important challenges we face – energy, climate change, and health care – are under the jurisdiction of the Commerce Committee. In large measure, our success as Congress will depend on how the Commerce Committee performs.”

“Enacting comprehensive energy, climate, and health care reform will not be easy,” said Waxman, but, “The public expects Congress and President-elect Obama to work together to find solutions to the nation’s most pressing problems.”

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Thursday, “Henry Waxman will bring to the post of Chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee the outstanding leadership he has demonstrated as chair of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

“Under his leadership, the committee and the entire caucus will make progress toward making America energy independent, making health care available to all Americans, and addressing the greatest challenge of our time, global warming,” she said.

The replacement of Dingell by Waxman could affect the outcome of possible legislation offering financial assistance to the beleagured auto industry, which has requested at least $25 billion to stave off collapse.

Today, Speaker Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid sent the following letter to the executives of the Ford, General Motors and Chrysler, calling on them to “submit a credible restructuring plan that results in a viable industry, with quality jobs, and economic opportunity for the 21st century while protecting taxpayer investments” by December 2.

“It is critical that you meet this deadline since we have announced we are prepared to come back into session the week of December 8 to consider legislation to assist your industry. We intend to give pertinent agencies within the executive branch, the Government Accountability Office, the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve, as well as outside experts, the opportunity to comment on your work,” Reid and Pelosi wrote.

Senator Inhofe calls higher fuel efficiency standards that may be a condition of the potential auto industry bailout, “environmental thuggery.”

In a speech on the Senate Floor Thursday, Inhofe said, “The proposed $25 billion bailout of Detroit now appears to have been hijacked by the powerful environmental lobby.”

Quoting a November 19 article in the “Wall Street Journal,” Inhofe said, “the auto bailout has degenerated into a tool to ‘make Detroit a subsidiary of the Sierra Club.’”

“We hear proponents of the auto bailout endlessly say it’s about jobs,” said Inhofe. “But the truth is, this bailout appears to be about environmental lobbies taking over the U.S. auto industry.”

The Congressional balance of power is set, but the actual seat count is still shifting.

Right now, in the Senate, the Democrats hold 55 seats, the Republicans hold 40, and there are two Independents – Joe Lieberman and Bernie Saunders, who caucus with the Democrats.

Three seats are vacant or undecided.

One Illinois seat is vacant as President-elect Barack Obama, a Democrat, has resigned. This seat will be filled by a replacement appointed by a Democratic governor.

Delaware does not yet have a vacancy, but Vice President-elect Joe Biden, a Democrat, is expected to resign on or before inauguration day, January 20, 2009. His seat will be filled by a replacement appointed by a Democratic governor.

In Minnesota, the seat is held by Senator Norm Coleman, who won the 2002 election. While Coleman leads Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party challenger Al Franken by 215 votes, the race remains too close to call. The close margin triggered a mandatory recount, which began on November 19. The recount is not expected to be resolved for at least a month.

In Georgia, a run-off election between Republican incumbent Saxby Chambless and Democratic challenger Jim Martin is underway.

In the House of Representatives, the Democrats hold 255 seats, the Republicans hold 175, and there are no Independents. Five seats are vacant or undecided.

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WASHINGTON, DC, May 30, 2008 (ENS) – Congress will consider climate change legislation in a variety of forms next week when legislators return to Washington. Both House and Senate have bills to work with and changes to measures previously introduced.

A measure that would reduce greenhouse gases according to scientific targets and reinvest any revenue to create American jobs and fund research and development was given its first public airing on Wednesday by Congressman Edward Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat.

At a speech at the Center for American Progress, Markey, who chairs the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming, and is a senior member of the Energy and Commerce and Natural Resources committees, laid out his science and consumer-based vision for climate legislation.

“I am here today because the chorus for change is deafening. The time for action is now,” said Markey. “We must cap pollution, we must invest in consumers, jobs and the technology of tomorrow, and America must lead the world in solving our greatest challenges, and we must start now.”

The bill is called the Investing in Climate Action and Protection Act, or iCAP for short, the small “i” a tip of the cap to the technological potential of clean energy, Markey explained. The bill will be introduced next week when Congress is back in session.

The legislation offers what Markey calls “a new paradigm in global warming legislation – the Cap-and-Invest system.”

The bill caps pollution at 85 percent below 2005 levels by 2050. It then establishes an auction system that sets a price on carbon dioxide, CO2, emissions, and allows companies to compete for reductions, or buy or trade credits within the system.

The measure takes $8 trillion in revenues that Markey expects polluters will pay to emit greenhouse gases over the length of the bill, and reinvests that money back to American families and workers and into promoting a clean energy economy.

More than half of the funds generated by the cap and invest system would go back to low and middle income American families to offset any increases in energy their costs as the economy transitions to low or zero-carbon energy sources, Markey explained..

iCAP invests in green collar job training for workers in a clean energy economy, mass transit and smart growth, energy efficiency programs, adaptation measures here in and around the world.

“We must invest in the American economy and in American workers, and launch an energy technology renaissance that will rival the information technology revolution of the past decade,” said Markey. “We all benefited from the Industrial Age, and we have watched the dawn of the Information Age. Today, let’s start the Clean Energy Age.”

In the Senate, a greenhouse gas emissions cap and trade bill by John Warner, a Virginia Republican and Joe Lieberman, a Connecticut Independent, will be debated on Monday.

It has been revised by the addition of an amendment by Barbara Boxer, a California Democrat who chairs the Environment and Public Works Committee.

The Boxer Substitute Amendment to the Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act allows a declining amount of greenhouse gas emissions between 2012 and 2050, reducing them by about two percent per year from 2005 levels.

The amendment would reduce emissions from covered facilities 19 percent below current levels by 2020, and 71 percent by 2050. It is estimated to reduce total U.S. emissions from all sources, capped and non-capped by up to 66 percent by 2050.

The amendment sets aside a nearly $800 billion tax relief fund through 2050, which will help consumers in need of assistance related to energy costs.

The National Association of Clean Air Agencies, representing air pollution control agencies in 53 states and territories and over 165 metropolitan areas, endorsed the amendment in a letter to Boxer on Thursday because it preserves the rights of states and localities to develop standards, limitations, prohibitions, requirements or caps beyond the federal program.

“Retaining the ability of states and localities to serve as laboratories of innovation, as well as to take whatever steps they deem necessary to best protect human health and welfare in their respective jurisdictions, is imperative,” wrote association co-presidents Andrew Ginsburg and Ursula Kramer in their letter.

The ability of California to regulate its own greenhouse gas emissions and those of 17 other states under the Clean Air Act has been blocked this year by the refusal of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to waive weaker federal standards.

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