by Agence France-Presse
WASHINGTON—Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) said late Monday that efforts to craft sweeping, comprehensive legislation to combat climate change were still “very much alive.”
“We’re still pushing, we’re still talking, we’re still fighting, it’s very much alive—and I won’t quit,” Kerry said in a post on Talking Points Memo.
His comments came after Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham (S.C.), who had been working on the bill with Kerry and Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), backed away from it in protest over a decision by Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to move first on an immigration bill.
“It’s practically a rite of passage. No serious legislation ever makes it very far in Congress before it’s declared dead—at least once, sometimes two or three times,” Kerry said.
Kerry praised Graham for having “invested enormous amounts of time” in the effort to do “the hard, grinding work” on the compromise legislation.
The House of Representatives passed its version of the bill last year, creating a cap-and-trade program that would set a limit on greenhouse-gas emissions and create a market for trading pollution rights.
The Senate bill was to have set a price on carbon pollution and promoted offshore oil drilling, new nuclear plants, and development of renewable energy sources and other “clean” technologies to wean the United States off oil imports.
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