"A Congressional Difference of Opinion"-Senator Jeff Bingaman, D-NM
Monday, June 22, 2009SUSIE GHARIB: The House of Representatives could vote on the climate bill this week. It contains the highly debated cap and trade program aimed at reducing greenhouse emissions. So for the next two nights in our series "A Congressional Difference of Opinion," lawmakers will weigh in on climate change. Tonight we begin with Senator Jeff Bingaman, Democrat of New Mexico.
SEN. JEFF BINGAMAN (D) NEW MEXICO: In recent years, Congress has passed new laws that put us on a path to reduce our nation's dependence on imported fossil fuels. In the U.S. Senate right now in fact, we're in the process of writing another energy bill that will continue that shift. In writing this new legislation, a major objective has been to expand our ability to produce energy from renewable sources such as the sun and the wind.
One way to do that is by requiring utilities to produce a portion of their electricity from renewable sources and another big issue of course is helping them and others with the financing deployment of these new technologies. In addition to more renewable electricity, we need to implement a smart and robust national transmission grid and of course we need to maintain production of traditional sources of energy that we currently depend upon.
As a final challenge as I see it, we need to maintain the proper balance between energy and the environment, environmental policy we have. We face a serious international challenge with the problem of global warming. It demands a worldwide revolution in the energy technologies that are needed to prevent potentially catastrophic environmental changes. We need to put in place a regulatory regime to deal with climate change and I hope we can do that in this Congress. We need to look for bipartisan solutions to our energy problems and I'm looking forward to working with my colleagues in the Congress and the Obama administration to find those solutions. I'm Senator Jeff Bingaman.
GHARIB: And tomorrow, Senator Lisa Murkowski, Republican of Alaska and her take on climate change.
