Climate Change / Global Warming & Investing Implications

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Posted on Wed, Dec. 06, 2006


Boxer says panel will take on global warming

By David Whitney
McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON — Sen. Barbara Boxer, the liberal California Democrat who’ll head the leading Senate committee on the environment next year, declared Tuesday that "the days of rollbacks" on environmental protection are over.

"The way you stop these rollbacks is to shine a light on them," said Boxer, the incoming chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. She pledged that oversight hearings on controversial topics will be the staple of her tenure as committee head.

Boxer said her first act would be to convene a series of hearings on global warming and climate change, as early as January.

That’s an issue that’s been forbidden by the current chairman of the panel, Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., who discounts science suggesting that gases from fossil fuel consumption are warming the Earth like a greenhouse and changing its climate.

"There is going to be a sea change on the committee," Boxer said of the polar shift in committee leadership.

Boxer also touched on nuclear energy-related issues, saying:

• There are better alternatives than expanding nuclear power to meet energy needs while cutting greenhouse gases.

• Government plans for storing nuclear waste in Yucca Mountain in Nevada are in even more trouble now because of opposition from her and Senate Majority Leader-elect Harry Reid, D-Nev.

Pacific Gas and Electric Co., which owns the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant north of Avila Beach, is interested in sending spent fuel to the Yucca Mountain facility. The plant is adding temporary storage racks to its two spent-fuel storage pools and, because of permitting delays at Yucca Mountain, PG&E is building a spent-fuel facility at Diablo Canyon. The first dry casks for the aboveground facility are scheduled to be loaded in November 2007.

As a prelude to the coming battle on the committee over global warming, Inhofe has scheduled a hearing today on the role of the news media in promoting the notion of global warming. Inhofe contends that false concerns about global warming have risen to the level of "hysteria."

Boxer called the hearing a "waste of time," declaring that the U.S. record on reducing greenhouse gases is "worse than dismal."

"It’s disastrous," she said.

Boxer said that of 56 countries working to reduce such emissions, the United States ranked fourth from the bottom.

"If America is going to be a leader, we must act," she said.

Boxer promised a series of hearings that will examine all aspects of and all views about global warming, including those of senators, scientists, environmentalists and businesses.

"My plan for global warming is to listen, listen, listen."
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