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NEW YORK - As the U.S. Congress debates an energy bill roundly rejected by environmentalists and public health advocates, the Democratic hopefuls for the presidency in 2004 are seeking to distinguish themselves with energy plans that would wean the country from its addiction to fossil fuels.
While differing in details, these alternative energy plans all vow greater investments in renewable energy sources like wind, solar and biomass, stepping up fuel efficiency for vehicles and protecting sensitive oil-rich areas that President George W Bush, a Republican, has targeted for drilling.
"All of the Democratic proposals are head and shoulders above what the Bush administration has put forth," said Debbie Boger, the Washington representative for global warming and energy of the Sierra Club.
Most of the Democrats have repeatedly attacked Bush for pulling out of the Kyoto Protocol, an international treaty that calls for nations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions--a major cause of global warming, scientists say--by six percent below 1990 levels by 2012.
Former President Bill Clinton signed Kyoto, but Bush refuses to submit the treaty to Congress for ratification because he says industrialized nations like the United States are unfairly singled out.
Few of the Democratic contenders themselves unconditionally support Kyoto as written.
Senator Joe Lieberman of Connecticut was a member of the official Senate observation group to the Kyoto conference on global warming. He supported the Clinton position at the conference, but voted in 1997 to require all nations in the developing world, including giants China and India, to be included in Kyoto, in effect killing the treaty. Lieberman also voted in 2000 to block funding to implement Kyoto, again blocking the deal.
The senator, who leads among contenders, has since vowed to "move America back into the Kyoto process." In January, he unveiled a bill that would require U.S. industry to reduce carbon dioxide emissions to 2000 levels by the year 2010 and to 1990 levels by 2016.
Massachusetts Senator John Kerry, a delegate to the Earth Summit in 1992 and the Kyoto climate talks in 1997, has also argued that developing countries be held to Kyoto.
He co-sponsored a State Department bill amendment that directed the Bush administration to work toward revising the treaty by promoting shared international responsibility of all major world powers to cut carbon dioxide emissions.
Former Vermont governor Howard Dean has sided most closely with the Bush administration, endorsing the National Governors Association policy, which opposed the Kyoto Protocol unless it included mandatory emissions cuts for developing countries. The policy recommended that the United States "not sign or ratify any agreement that would result in serious harm to the U.S. economy."
Of the Democrats now running, only Ohio Congressman Dennis Kucinich has stated, "the U.S. must ratify the Kyoto Protocol."
While Kyoto remains a political hot potato, most Democrats are firmly opposed to the Bush energy plan now before the Senate. The bill, which some analysts give a less than 50 percent chance of passing, increases subsidies to the oil, coal and nuclear industries, and provides for only modest increases in the fuel economy of cars, sport utility vehicles (SUVs) and other light trucks.
The issue is important because the Department of Energy warns that U.S. dependence on oil imports is growing. Imports now meet 55 percent of U.S. petroleum demand and are expected to account for 68 percent by 2025.
Many observers believe that the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq was motivated primarily by the need to secure oil reserves to meet that rising demand.
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