Washington » Salt Lake City Mayor Ralph Becker joined several environmental leaders in the nation's capital Wednesday to urge Congress to pass sweeping climate change legislation by Earth Day in April.
"There is now more to do than ever," Becker said at a news conference at the National Press Club with the founder of the original Earth Day celebration in 1970.
Becker, who has pushed to make Utah's capital city more eco-friendly, said that local officials, from mayors to counties, across the United States have worked to turn their communities green but that the federal government needs to step up and pass climate change legislation.
"We're not going to do this alone," said Becker, who was in Washington for a U.S. Conference of Mayors meeting. "We need federal partners."
The House passed the so-called cap-and-trade legislation last year that would put a limit on how much a company can pollute but allow businesses to buy credits to pollute more, a move aimed at curbing greenhouse gas emissions. The Senate has yet to act.
Becker, together with Earth Day founder Denis Hayes and officials from the National Wildlife Federation, Greenpeace USA and the Earth Day Network, pressed that the Senate should act by April 22 to pass the House version of cap-and-trade bill and then adjourn on that day to celebrate.
"We are at the beginning of a new revolution," said Kathleen Rogers, president of the Earth Day Network, which lobbies on behalf of a sustainable environment. Rogers said that like the industrial revolution, the green revolution could allow the United States to lead out on conservation.
"We can't really wait any longer," Rogers said.
Rep. Rob Bishop, R-Utah, however, said in a recent op-ed that proponents of cap-and-trade legislation are trying to pitch their effort as the "equivalent of a giant magic job Pez dispenser," when it would kill jobs.
Bishop, who voted against the bill, wrote in the new online news outlet Daily Caller that the Democrats' legislation would raise the price of gasoline, electricity, food and destroy millions of jobs and prolong the recession, all for a 0.22-degree temperature drop at the end of the century. He proposed allowing individual states to decide their own path forward.
"If cap-and-trade is the Shangri-La supporters think it will be, let it be proven and other states will follow," Bishop said in the editorial. "Likewise, if it doesn't work, other states can learn from its failure and avoid the same mistakes."
