Anton Caputo
Express-News Staff Writer
Armed with a 20-foot blow-up replica of a flaming Earth, environmental activists tried to bring the issue of global warming front and center Friday in hot and steamy San Antonio.
Environment Texas, an Austin-based organization, set up shop with its burning Earth and protest signs in front of the Central Library in downtown San Antonio. The group wants San Antonio Rep. Charles Gonzalez to use his position on the House Energy and Commerce committee to help push the Safe Climate Act.
The legislation, sponsored by California Democrat Henry Waxman, would drastically reduce the nation's carbon dioxide emissions. The San Antonio Democrat, who didn't attend the news conference, wouldn't commit to co-sponsoring the bill saying he would need to "read it carefully and determine the consequences."
But Gonzalez did say he supported efforts to battle global warming. "Waxman is truly in the forefront of what needs to be done and where we do need to be moving in this country, and I do believe we are moving too slowly," he said.
The news conference comes on the heels of a recent study by the U.S. Public Interest Research Group that shows U.S. emissions of carbon dioxide nearly doubled from 1960 to 2001. Carbon dioxide is the main greenhouse gas blamed for global warming. Vehicles and industrial plants, particularly coal-fired power plants, are major sources.
Texas leads a group of 28 states that more than doubled their global warming emissions during that period. The Lone Star State produces more carbon dioxide than any other and would rank seventh in the world if it were its own country.
Texas is also one of the states trying to dramatically increase its fleet of coal-fired power plants to meet the energy needs of a booming population. There are 17 new coal plants either approved or proposed in the state, including one in San Antonio. Nationally, about 150 new coal plants have been proposed.
The Safe Climate Act calls for the country to freeze carbon dioxide levels in 2010 and reduce them by 2 percent a year through 2020 and 5 percent a year through 2050. This would be done, in part, by creating a cap-and-trade program similar to one instituted in the 1990s to combat acid rain.
Under such programs, companies are allocated pollution credits and have the option of trading or selling unused credits. The act's aim is to stop the planet's temperature from rising another 3.6 degrees. That's the point that many scientists believe would cause potentially drastic effects.
Katie Lipsmeyer of Environment Texas said she is hopeful Waxman's bill will become a law. But most political observers, even those firmly entrenched in the environmental movement, don't believe the bill will make it out of committee. "Not in this Congress," said Antonia Herzog, who works in the Natural Resource Defense Council's Climate Center.
acaputo@express-news.net
