Senator Bond Slams Global Warming Bill

This is an oldie but goodie: Global warming could shrink the global economy by 20 percent, according to a 2006 report by economist Sir Nicholas Stern. But taking action now, he says, would cost just 1 percent of the global gross domestic product.

We thought we'd dust off The Stern Review in response to Sen. Kit Bond's (R-Mo.) criticism of Congress's latest global-warming-legislation proposal, that imposing limits of greenhouse-gas emissions would threaten the nation's economic growth.

"Your proposal would impose hardship on U.S. citizens and threatens robust growth in the U.S. economy," Bond said repeatedly in a letter last week to Sens. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) and John Warner (R-Va.), regarding their plan to reduce greenhouse gases by 70 percent by 2050.

The bipartisan Lieberman-Warner climate-change plan—particularly notable because Warner is the second-ranking Republican on the Environmental committee and a senior senator who didn't support global-warming legislation before—also gives industry flexibility under a cap-and-trade system that allows the buying and selling of pollution credits under decreasing overall limits.

But Bond's letter states that businesses would be placed in jeopardy because of duplicative state and regional carbon-control programs, and that low-income families would have their livelihoods disrupted by higher energy costs. And fight he says he will, to ensure that climate legislation does not "disproportionately hurt those who struggle to pay their energy bills," according to the Associated Press.

Forest. Trees. Et cetara, et cetera. ::AP and BBC News