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The bill requires that large U.S. companies, including utilities, oil refiners, manufacturers and others, reduce emissions of carbon dioxide and other gases associated with global warming by 17 percent by 2020 and 83 percent by 2050, from 2005 levels.

They would do so by phasing in the use of cleaner alternative energy than high-polluting oil and coal.

At the core of the bill, which is around 1,500 pages long, is a “cap and trade” program designed to achieve the emissions reductions by industry.

Under the plan, the government would issue a declining number of pollution permits to companies, which could sell those permits to each other as needed.

‘BIGGEST JOB-KILLING BILL’

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House Republican leader John Boehner called the measure “the biggest job-killing bill that has ever been on the floor of the House of Representatives.”

Representative Joe Barton, the senior Republican on the Energy and Commerce Committee that played a key role in the bill, said it would set unrealistic targets for cutting carbon pollution. “You would have to reduce emissions in the United States to the level that we had in 1910,” Barton said.

Both predicted higher prices for energy and other consumer goods and more U.S. jobs being shipped abroad as companies try to avoid the tough pollution-control requirements. Democrats said consumers mostly would be protected from price hikes. 

Source/Full Story: Reuters

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