Obama: Climate-Change Bill Must Deal With Regional Differences

President Barack Obama called for a greenhouse-gas emissions reduction scheme that protects against outsized effects on some regions of the country, his most detailed remarks yet as Congress prepares to issue a major climate-change bill. “We’ve got to move to a new energy era and that means moving away from polluting energy sources towards cleaner energy sources that is a potential engine for economic growth,” Mr. Obama said on Tuesday in a televised public appearance. “I think cap-and-trade is the best way from my perspective to achieve some of those gains because what it does is it starts pricing the pollution that’s being sent into the atmosphere.” “The way it’s structured has to take into account regional differences, it has to protect consumers from huge spikes in electricity prices, so there are a lot of technical issues that are going to have to be sorted through,” Mr. Obama said. The remarks come as House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman, (D., Calif.), finalizes a climate-change bill that he wants to vote out of his committee by the end of May...WSJ