No consensus on climate path as Obama pleads with lawmakers

Jun 30, 2010, 13:21 GMT

Washington - US President Barack Obama invited nearly two dozen senators to the White House Tuesday to make a final push for long-stalled climate and energy legislation, but appeared unable to bridge a growing divide within both political parties.

'I think it's fair to say that there was no consensus about what the path forward is,' Senator Lisa Mukowski, a key Republican involved in the negotiations, told reporters after the meeting.

Obama has made overhauling climate and energy legislation a key priority for this administration, yet has recently backed off a central element of those reforms: a cap-and-trade system that would essentially force companies to pay for their pollution.

Obama told the senators he still believed putting a price on pollution marked 'the best way for us to transition to a clean energy economy,' White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said.

But 'not all of the senators agreed with this approach, and the president welcomed other approaches and ideas,' Gibbs said, suggesting Obama would settle for a bill without a cap-and-trade system, which has already been introduced in Europe.

The US House of Representatives approved climate legislation last year. The Senate is more divided, working off a series of differing proposals by members to help the US transition towards cleaner forms of energy and cut greenhouse-gas emissions blamed for global warming.

Many of the measures - including cap-and-trade - have run into opposition from many conservatives who fear the negative impact on economic growth, and some left-leaning lawmakers from states that still rely heavily on fossil fuels.

Gibbs said Obama was still hopeful that climate legislation would be passed by the end of this year. Murkowski complained that the 'enemy' of reaching a deal on the legislation was its rushed timing.

Fred Krupp, president of Environmental Defense Fund, a Washington- based climate group, said the White House meeting should mark Obama's 'final push toward passage' of the climate legislation.