Kerry in Copenhagen: America Will Pass Climate Legislation

Two days after Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) reassured Copenhagen negotiators that the United States was taking action on climate change, Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) — Boxer’s co-sponsor on the Senate’s comprehensive climate bill — echoed her message this morning in a speech at the international climate conference. Congressional Quarterly reports:

Sen. John Kerry promised the world Wednesday that Congress will pass a sweeping climate change bill in 2010 — if negotiators here can reach a global deal this week. [...]

[Kerry] used his moment on the world stage to explain the local politics that drive congressional politics, and to illustrate the concrete challenge of finding 60 Senate votes for legislation that would transform the nation’s energy economy, even as the nation struggles through a recession.

Kerry highlighted the cooperation of Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), a conservative Republican, and Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.), a staunch supporter of coal industry interests, to demonstrate the brightening prospects for stateside climate legislation. But he emphasized the need for action by other leading emitters “to assure a senator from Ohio that steel workers in his state won’t lose their jobs to India and China because those countries are not participating in a way that is measurable, reportable and verifiable.”

But China has resisted calls for an international system to verify its carbon emissions reductions, in what could be a major sticking point in the Copenhagen negotiations.

Kerry, like Boxer, hopes to counteract the message of prominent climate change denier Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), who plans to tell delegates in Copenhagen that the Senate will not pass a climate bill.