By Deborah Zabarenko, Environment Correspondent
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - One day after President Barack Obama asked Congress to craft a law to cap carbon emissions, battle lines were drawn in Congress on Wednesday over how to deal with human-spurred climate change.
Testimony at two congressional hearings was starkly divided between such experts as R.K. Pachauri of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, who called for quick action to curb emissions, and Princeton physicist William Happer, who said increased carbon dioxide emissions "will be good for mankind."
Happer likened the push to limit greenhouse pollution now to the prohibition of U.S. liquor sales in the early 20th century, a constitutional amendment that was later repealed.
"Prohibition (of liquor) was a mistake and our country has probably still not fully recovered from the damage it did," Happer told the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. "Institutions like organized crime got their start in that era. Drastic limitations on CO2 are likely to damage our country in analogous ways."
Senator Barbara Boxer, a California Democrat who heads the committee, said after Happer's testimony that he is affiliated with an institute that received hundreds of thousands of dollars from ExxonMobil over the past decade.
The burning of fossil fuels, including in vehicles and power plants, is a source of atmospheric carbon dioxide, which contributes to climate change.
CAPPING CARBON
A cap-and-trade law would limit the amount of this greenhouse gas that companies could emit, but would let those companies that emit more than the limit to purchase allowances from those that emit less.
Obama favors such a law, and told a joint session of Congress on Tuesday: "I ask this Congress to send me legislation that places a market-based cap on carbon pollution and drives the production of more renewable energy in America."
The president said he would invest $15 billion annually on technologies that keep carbon out of the atmosphere, including solar and wind power, biofuels, "clean coal" and more fuel-efficient cars and trucks.
Boxer's committee shepherded a cap-and-trade bill to the Senate floor last year, where it died on a procedural maneuver. She has vowed to try again this year.
On the House of Representatives side of Capitol Hill, the Ways and Means Committee heard from Brenda Ekwurzel, a climate scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists.
"We are diminishing the ocean's ability to absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere," Ekwurzel said. "... That means a ton of carbon dioxide emitted today will leave more CO2 in the atmosphere than a ton emitted decades ago. Clearly, we cannot afford further delay."
John Christy, Alabama's state climatologist, told the House committee that even drastic cuts in carbon dioxide emissions by 2020 would barely affect the global temperature. To reduce carbon emissions while spurring economic growth, Christy advocated "massive implementation" of a nuclear power program.
(Editing by Bill Trott)
