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WASHINGTON - President Barack Obama on Tuesday pledged to fight on for a climate change bill, despite the collapse of US Senate legislation designed to cut greenhouse gas emissions.
Obama, after talks with Democratic and Republican leaders in Congress, said a watered down energy bill soon to come before lawmakers, shorn of climate change action, was just a first step.
"That legislation is an important step in the right direction," said Obama, of a bill which focuses on the aftermath of the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and developing alternative energy projects.
"But I want to emphasize it's only the first step and I intend to keep pushing for broader reform, including climate legislation."
Obama said the Gulf oil spill had shown that current US energy policy was "unsustainable," adding the United States could not stand by and let China create the clean energy jobs of the future.
"We should be developing those renewable energy resources and creating those high-wage, high-skill jobs right here in the United States of America.
"That's what comprehensive energy and climate reform would do, and that's why I intend to keep pushing this issue forward."
Obama's Democratic allies last week acknowledged they lacked votes to approve the first-ever US plan restricting carbon emissions blamed for global warming and shelved the legislation.
With Republicans hoping for big gains in November's congressional polls, the move may mean the end of carbon capping legislation for the foreseeable future, dealing a blow to the global effort to battle warming.
The president also called on Republicans to drop their policy of blanket opposition to his agenda by backing a bill that would offer incentives for small businesses to create jobs.
"We shouldn't let America's small businesses be held hostage to partisan politics, and certainly not at this critical time."
Obama, who will this week step up his political campaigning ahead of mid-term elections in November, warned lawmakers should ignore "chatter" about politics and polls and honour their commitments to voters.
"The folks we serve... they sent us here for a reason. They sent us here to listen to their voices, they sent us here to represent their interests, not our own."
Later, Senate Democratic Majority Leader Harry Reid unveiled legislation, dubbed the Clean Energy Jobs and Oil Accountability Act, aimed at boosting the use of "green" energy and encourage energy efficiency.
The measure aims to ensure that BP pays fully for damage from the catastrophic Gulf of Mexico oil spill and to drive the firm and other oil giants to develop new technologies to prevent and respond to future spills.
It would also overhaul US government agencies in a bid to improve their ability to respond to such catastrophes.
The bill includes five billion dollars to provide point-of-sale rebates to convince consumers to buy energy efficient appliances, and calls for promoting a shift to vehicles powered by natural gas or electricity.
It would also scrap a 75 million-dollar cap on oil firms' liability for economic damages from major spills -- making energy firms responsible not just for total cleanup costs but also job or revenue losses.
And it would sharply increase a per-barrel oil tax that fills a special trust fund to pay for damages from major spills from eight cents to 49 cents, and raise the cap on per-incident Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund expenditures from one billion dollars to five billion dollars. - AFP/vm
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