Senate Democrats seek to win climate moderates

The sun sets over the Manhattan skyline during the U.S. Open in New York, September 5, 2009.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Democrats in the U.S. Senate, who this week sketched out legislation to tackle global warming, now face the hard part -- convincing enough fence-sitters to join their cause.

It is labor-intensive work, figuring out the combination of undecided senators and the changes in the legislation needed to arrive at the magic number of 60. That is the level of support needed in the 100-member Senate to maneuver around opposition tactics.

Senator John Kerry, who wrote the Democrats' climate change proposal with Senator Barbara Boxer, said the effort was under way. It is likely to focus on Democratic moderates such as Indiana's Evan Bayh and Republican centrists like Maine's Olympia Snowe.

"We have to bring people to the table. This is a starting point ... the opening of the negotiating process," Kerry told Reuters in a telephone interview.

Kerry and Boxer have left plenty of blank spaces in their 800-page draft bill that would reduce U.S. industry emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases by 20 percent by 2020, less than European Union countries have pledged.

As they work to fill in the details, Kerry and Boxer will be looking for ways to lure coal-state senators, rural senators and those representing heavy-manufacturing states.

"To a large extent, success in the Senate will depend on how this bill treats coal," said Manik Roy of the Pew Center for Global Climate Change.

Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown is withholding his support until language is nailed down that would protect steel, glass, paper, aluminum and other energy-intensive factories in his home state of Ohio.

With Ohio's unemployment rate now about 11 percent, Brown worries that "if we do climate change (legislation) badly, it causes an additional hollowing out of manufacturing." The liberal-leaning Economic Policy Institute estimates that 4 million U.S. jobs are supported by energy-intensive manufacturing.

Brown is pushing for tough "border adjustment" provisions that would potentially tax foreign goods at a higher rate if they come from countries that are not taking steps to use more alternative energies, which can add to the cost of goods.

Kerry said such language was nearly complete. While he would not give details, he said it would comply with World Trade Organization rules.

CONCESSIONS SOUGHT FOR NUCLEAR POWER

Independent Senator Joseph Lieberman has been working with a leading Republican voice on climate change: former presidential candidate John McCain, who is holding out for more concessions for the nuclear power industry. Earlier this week, McCain told Reuters the Kerry-Boxer product came nowhere close to meeting nuclear power needs and was a plan he could "never" support.

But if Democrats can find a way to make McCain and Lieberman happy, that might also win the vote of their close ally, Republican Senator Lindsey Graham.

Coal-state senators are making their concerns known as well. West Virginia Democratic Senator Jay Rockefeller quickly rejected the Kerry-Boxer bill, saying its 2020 goal for reducing carbon "is unrealistic and harmful -- it is simply not enough time to deploy the carbon capture and storage and energy efficiency technologies we need."

Kerry said he was "absolutely confident about our ability to work with Jay Rockefeller" and West Virginia's senior senator, Democrat Robert Byrd.

Farther west, Democratic Senator John Tester also wants incentives for clean coal technology, partially in the hope that it also could help in the extraction of a huge reserve of oil buried in eastern Montana.

Then there is North Dakota's Byron Dorgan, one of 19 Senate Democrats up for re-election next year, who might not want to cast a difficult climate change vote anytime soon.

While he says he supports efforts to reduce carbon emissions, Dorgan has a problem with the "cap-and-trade" program that is the backbone of the Boxer-Kerry bill and the bill passed in the House of Representatives in June.

"For those who like the wild price swings in the oil futures market, the unseemly speculation in mortgage backed securities ... this cap and trade plan will be the answer to their prayers," Dorgan wrote in an op-ed column in July.

(Editing by Peter Cooney)