In a speech to lawmakers, the US president argued the law was needed because clean energy technology held the key to economic prosperity.

Calling the legislation historic, he said the adoption of the Waxman-Markey Bill would underpin energy security as well as tackle carbon pollution.

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The Congressional Budget Office review of the cost to consumers of proposed climate change legislation shows a cost much lower than GOP talking points.

Republicans including GOP House leader John Boehner have quoted an increase in annual energy costs per householdas high as $3,128 by 2015, and the conservative think tank the Heritage Foundation took the bidding up as high as $4,300 per annum.

The CBO - a non-partisan office - arrived at the figure of $175 for an average household by 2020.

Republicans insist the CBO figure does not attach enough weight to the export of jobs abroad to countries that do not cap their emissions.

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The IATA has announced industry goals for carbon neutral growth by 2020, and a 50% absolute reduction in emissions by 2050, with a little help from their friends: their service providers, fuel companies, and the world's governments, whose cooperation on cap-and-trade schemes would be needed.  The IATA's statement reads like a riposte to widespread criticism, often from politicians, that paint the industry as a leading climate villain, while simultaneously challenging the world's politicians to enact serious cap-and-trade legislation.

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A bill seeking to curb greenhouse gases has made its way through the committee process and is on its way to a vote by the House of Representatives.  According to the Washington Post, "The bill calls for a 17 percent reduction in greenhouse-gas emissions by 2020 and an 83 percent reduction by 2050."  Although the bill is considered too weak by some environmental groups, Greenpeace chief among them, a majority of environmentalists appear to approve the bill as being a good first step in reducing the US' carbon emissions.  The bill also has the support of President Obama, although, again, it is weaker than he had hoped it would be, and weaker than the platform he campaigned on. 

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In his New York Times blog, Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman berates those touting high economic damage from making carbon cost.

Attacking Robert Samuelson's blog, he says:

"I don’t especially mean to pick on Samuelson, but this column exemplifies a strange thing about the climate change debate. Opponents of a policy change generally believe that market economies are wonderful things, able to adapt to just about anything — anything, that is, except a government policy that puts a price on greenhouse gas emissions. Limits on the world supply of oil, land, water — no problem. Limits on the amount of CO2 we can emit — total disaster."

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