Washington -- After years of debate over global warming, a measure to dramatically reduce carbon emissions in the United States is set to come to the U.S. Senate floor in June.
But Ohio's two senators are likely to vote against it, contributing to what many people expect will be the bill's failure.
George Voinovich and Sherrod Brown come at environmental issues from different ideological positions, so their approaches on climate change form an unusual intersection. There are two constants: Voinovich, a conservative, and Brown, a liberal, agree that global warming is real.
And both represent the rust-belt state of Ohio, with a concentration of industry that relies on carbon-heavy coal for its electrical power.
Both worry that this global-warming bill -- the only one to make it this far -- could drive up costs dramatically for Ohio industry. Industry's biggest worry is that the bill will prompt a rapid switch from cheap, abundant-but-dirty coal to natural gas in order to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. Natural gas is clean, but its price could soar with that kind of demand. Other sources of alternative energy are not yet abundant enough for Ohio's industrial economy, industry representatives say.
"I have serious concerns about any climate-change bill that doesn't take into account energy-intensive industries like we have in Ohio -- glass and chemicals and steel and aluminum and foundries," Brown says.
Voinovich says, "This bill is going to have enormous costs on just the ordinary citizen's energy costs and have a dramatic impact on middle-class Americans' standard of living, particularly those people who are retired and the poor."
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