In the debate over his top environmental goals, President Obama is backing away from "cap and trade." Not the policy. It's the phrase itself, deemed confusing by Democratic pollsters, that has all but disappeared from the president's vocabulary of late.

Sens. Tom Carper (D-Del.) and Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) announced today that they will be working on legislation to reduce harmful sulfur dioxide (SO2), nitrogen oxide (NOx) and mercury emissions from America's power plants.

PSR expressed disappointment in the president’s approach to control global warming, presented today in a speech at the White House. The administration would reduce emissions, primarily carbon dioxide from electric generating plants across the country after 2025, ignoring the well established goal of a reducing all domestic greenhouse gas emissions by more than 20 percent by that time.

The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee moved global warming legislation to the full Senate today, marking a significant development in the effort to curb greenhouse gas emissions. The Lieberman-Warner bill, S. 2191 as amended by the chair, was reported out of the committee with few amendments and likely will be considered by the full Senate in 2008.

Despite minor changes accepted by the sponsors of the bill, the Lieberman-Warner global warming legislation, S. 2191, still is inadequate to address the wide-scale emissions of greenhouse gases that are causing global warming. The Environment and Public Works Committee will consider the bill in the coming weeks, and PSR calls on the committee to make improvements so that the bill will lead to the emission reductions called for by the scientific community.