Clean-energy advocates invoke Muskie to fight GOP resolution

Muskie, not Murkowski. That was the message in Portland Thursday of a group urging Maine Sens. Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe to oppose a climate change resolution coming up before the Senate.

1Sky, a nationwide campaign centered around climate change legislation, argued that Maine's U.S. Sen. Ed Muskie would oppose a current resolution by U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, who wants to limit the federal government's regulation of greenhouse gas emissions.

Murkowski, the ranking Republican on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, said her disapproval resolution — co-sponsored by 35 Republicans and three Democrats — is necessary to avoid the "economic train wreck" that would result from the Environmental Protection Agency regulating greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act.

But opponents of the resolution said the Clean Air Act, a centerpiece of Muskie's Senate career through the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, would slow the country's move to a green economy.

"Basically what that seeks to do is gut the authority of the Clean Air Act, that was championed and pushed through by our own Sen. Muskie, he's a great giant of the environmental movement; I think it would be terrible to roll back the advances we've made and the good that act has done for the United States," said Greg Brown, 1Sky state organizer for Maine, before hosting a press conference Thursday in Portland.

"It will slow our investment in what i see as an inevitable green economy," Brown said.

In a press release, Murkowski said EPA regulation of greenhouse gases could force businesses to cut jobs or close their doors; severely restrict domestic energy production; make housing less affordable; and make consumer goods more expensive.

"If you truly believe that EPA climate regulations are good for the country, then vote to oppose our resolution," Murkowski said. "But if you share our concerns, and believe that climate policy should be debated in Congress, then vote with us to support it."

Members of 1Sky and their allies said the resolution would send the wrong message.

The use of the Clean Air Act to reduce carbon emissions, which the Supreme Court authorized in 2007, "is a crucial resource for reducing dangerous global warming pollution in the near-term," according to 1Sky.

"With climate change, at the end of the day we have national security issues based on our use of fossil fuels, we have severe health and economic problems with the status quo," Brown said.

"You're affected either way with the status quo," he said.