Bush Plans Trade in Methane to Curb Climate Change (tiny effect) [View All]

[papau]

http://ap.tbo.com/ap/breaking/MGBFO3OL7XD.html

Bush Plans Trade in Methane to Curb Climate Change
By John Heilprin Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) - Methane emissions would be harvested by industrial nations (US, Australia, India, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Britain and Ukraine) and sold to poorer countries for use as a clean-burning fuel under a plan that would also slow global warming, Bush administration officials announced Wednesday.

The heads of the Environmental Protection Agency and the Energy Department, along with President Bush's senior environmental adviser, said the plan would create a new market in methane, a heat-trapping atmospheric gas that largely goes to waste.

The plan involves spending up to $53 million over the next five years as part of an agreement with seven countries to harvest emissions of methane primarily from landfills, coal mines and oil and gas systems.

The administration, meanwhile, has opposed restricting emissions of carbon dioxide, the industrial gas most cited by scientists for warming the atmosphere like a greenhouse. President Bush had supported regulating that gas in his 2000 campaign. <snip>