Boxer promises action on global warming

WASHINGTON — The Democrat poised to take over the Senate environment committee promises a "sea change" from six years of Republican inaction on global warming and says she expects Congress to send President Bush legislation to start curbing greenhouse gases.

Sen. Barbara Boxer of California, who will lead the Environment and Public Works Committee beginning in January, acknowledged Tuesday she may fall short of her goal: imposing the nation's first mandatory limits on industrial emissions of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases.

"I have no line in the sand," she said. "Even a little step will look like a big step."

Boxer also promised to end Bush administration rollbacks on environmental rules if they are not supported by science.

"Any kind of weakening of environmental laws or secrecy or changes in the dead of night — it's over," Boxer said. "We're going to, for once, finally, make this committee an environment committee, not an anti-environment committee. ... This is a sea change that is coming to this committee."

Her chairmanship will be an abrupt turnaround from that of Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., whose last hearing Wednesday as chairman will be devoted to his view that the news media have fanned alarmism about global warming. Inhofe, who calls global warming a hoax, blocked attempts in his committee to regulate carbon dioxide.

Boxer's first hearing next month also will be devoted to global warming, but from an opposite point of view.

"This is a potential crisis of a magnitude we've never seen," she said Tuesday, explaining that her goal is to impose mandatory caps on carbon dioxide emissions, a step vehemently opposed by Bush's top environmental advisers.

Nonetheless, she promised to hear from all sides before trying to move a bill to Senate passage. "I very much want the environment to go back to being a nonpartisan issue," she said.

She said her model will be a new California law that imposes the first statewide limit on greenhouse gases and seeks to cut emissions by 25 percent, dropping them to 1990 levels by 2020. "Real goals, real percentages," she said.

Other areas of primary concern include children's health and toxic chemicals, and contaminated toxic waste sites yet to be cleaned up under the Superfund program.

"We want to send a signal to the world," Boxer said, complaining that the United States now lags behind more than 50 other countries addressing global warming.

Material from McClatchy Newspapers is included in this report