Obama pushes for domestic climate change act 

"There will be no new global deal if the United States is not part of it and we won't be part of it unless we are on track in enacting our own domestic plan," Todd Stern told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. 

"Unless we stand and deliver by enacting strong, mandatory nationwide climate and energy legislation, the effort to negotiate a new international agreement will come up short," Stern said. 

He added that the Obama administration in the next few days will unveil a series of proposals to be discussed in Copenhagen. An April 24 deadline for those plans can only be extended "by a little bit," he said. 

The House of Representatives is taking the lead in Congress in an effort to write legislation imposing tough new caps on emissions of carbon dioxide and other pollutants that are dumped into the atmosphere by sources including manufacturers and utilities. 

Not as fast as China 

The House Energy and Commerce Committee hopes to finish a bill by the end of May, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has promised to get it approved by the full House this year. 

Two democratic lawmakers, Representatives Henry A. Waxman of California and Edward J. Markey of Massachusetts, last month unveiled a 645-page draft , tentatively called the 'America Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009'. But the administration has not yet endorsed the proposal. The bill must be enacted in Congress by the Senate and House of Representatives together. 

Democrats, who control both chambers of Congress, will have a tougher time passing a climate control bill in the Senate, however, where a small band of opponents can use procedural roadblocks to stop legislation. 

Opponents, including many Republicans, say imposing new greenhouse controls on US companies would prompt them to move factories and jobs overseas, especially to developing countries such as China and India. 

These fast-developing countries are not bound by carbon limits set by the international Kyoto Protocol. The United States is the only major industrialised nation that has not agreed to this global pact to curb growth of emissions. 

The Copenhagen meeting is designed to launch a pact that would build on Kyoto. 

Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry said China lately has been "moving more rapidly than the United States" and could exceed Beijing's short-term goals for a 20 percent reduction in "energy intensity." 

Long-term, such progress could help China build a competitive edge in developing next-generation batteries and electric cars, Kerry said. 

Energy intensity is a measure of carbon emissions related to the size of a country's overall economy. While a country's absolute carbon emissions might rise, governments might try to show they have made environmental progress by citing a decrease in emissions relative to the size of their growing economies. 

(EurActiv with Reuters.)

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton yesterday compared the challenge of fighting climate change to her own struggle to lose weight. 

Speaking to State Department staff on Earth Day, Clinton said more must be done to reduce the department's environmental footprint and conceded this was a big challenge, much like one of her personal battles. 

"Often times when you face such an overwhelming challenge as global climate change, it can be somewhat daunting - it's kind of like trying to lose weight, which I know something about," she said amid laughter. 

"You think, 'oh I only have to lose X number of pounds' but it seems like such a far away goal," she added. 

"It's kind of like world peace, and so therefore why even try? Well, because we are called to try. That's who we are as human beings and that's especially how we think of ourselves as Americans."