In Europe, Pelosi to discuss climate

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is on an overseas trip to embrace an audience and a topic for which President Bush has shown scant affection: “Old Europe” and global warming.

Pelosi (D-San Francisco) and seven other House members left Saturday for meetings with scientists and politicians in Greenland, Germany and Belgium on ways to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.

The trip comes shortly before a climate change summit next month involving the leading industrialized nations and during a time of increased debate over what should succeed the Kyoto Protocol, a 1997 international treaty that caps the amount of carbon dioxide that can be emitted from power plants and factories in industrialized countries. It expires in 2012.

Bush rejected the accord, saying that it would harm the U.S. economy and that it unfairly excluded developing countries such as China and India from its obligations. Pelosi, who disagrees with Bush’s decision and many other of his environmental policies, said Friday that she wanted to work with the administration rather than provoke it.

But Pelosi stopped short of condemning the president’s call for slowing the nation’s growth rate in carbon emissions, an approach that many say is too meek.

“I think there are better ideas,” Pelosi said. “I want to keep the door completely open to working with the president on the issue of energy independence and global warming.... There are plenty of areas where we can find common ground.”

Since Democrats took over Congress in January, both the House and Senate have proposed to push the nation more aggressively to reduce carbon emissions.

Pelosi set up the House Energy Independence and Global Warming Committee and appointed Rep. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) as its chairman. The committee cannot write legislation but was created to study and offer recommendations on how to deal with global warming.

Markey said Saturday that contrary to the Bush administration, Europeans recognize the scientific consensus that the worst effects of global warming are yet to come if no action is taken.

“The administration needs to explain what alternative science it is still hanging its hat on, because most people believe that hat has already been blown away by overwhelming scientific evidence,” Markey said.