Congress should take lead on CO2 rules: lawmakers

By Chris Baltimore

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The task of writing first-ever rules to limit greenhouse gas emissions should fall to Congress and not federal regulators, key lawmakers in the House of Representatives said on Thursday.

Pressured by a landmark 2007 ruling by the Supreme Court that it must reconsider its refusal to regulate carbon-dioxide emissions from new cars and trucks, the Environmental Protection Agency last month started a long process of writing regulations.

The process could eventually yield the first rules on heat-trapping carbon dioxide emissions from both mobile sources like cars and stationary ones like power plants.

But concrete proposals are unlikely to emerge before President George W. Bush leaves office in 2009 and federal rules would likely be held up indefinitely by court challenges, lawmakers warned.

Rep. John Dingell, a Democrat and chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, said it would be "insane" for Congress to leave the task of writing regulations to the EPA and risk a "long and complex process" of "litigation on top of litigation.

"I'm sure that the legal profession would enjoy this mightily," Dingell said.

Dingell, whose Michigan home district is home to the Big Three U.S. automakers, is key to House efforts to craft global warming legislation.

Congress should follow through with efforts to write legislation, which would likely result in a cap-and-trade system to allow electric utilities and other major industry to swap permits to emit greenhouse gases to comply with mandatory nationwide limits, Dingell said.