Disparate Group's Remedy Likely to Be Short on Details

By JEFFREY BALL

A motley crew of corporations and environmental campaigners is scheduled to call on the U.S. government Tuesday to press forward with legislation to curb global-warming emissions despite the tough economic times.
The U.S. Climate Action Partnership is such a strange-bedfellows group that, when its members speak with one voice, policy makers take note. But what its leaders don't say at their scheduled Washington news conference this week is likely to be more telling than what they do say.
The group, known as USCAP, is about as close to a cross-section of the American economy as a Washington interest group gets. Its members include such corporate heavyweights as Detroit's Big Three, several coal-fired power companies and three oil multinationals. Also aboard are a few of the nation's most prominent environmental groups. To put it mildly, these players are seldom on the same team.
USCAP made waves when it made its debut in January 2007, calling on the government to cap U.S. industry's greenhouse-gas output, though President George W. Bush had made it clear he had no such intention.
Its rationale was twofold. Major polluters in the group figured it was only a matter of time before a Bush successor hit them with an emissions cap, so they wanted to try to shape the regulation to minimize their costs in complying. Members such as General Electric Co., which makes and sells wind turbines, figured a carbon cap would help it sell more such widgets.
President-elect Barack Obama and congressional Democrats have said they will move forward with instituting a cap on greenhouse-gas emissions. The debate will be over the specifics that will determine which industries, and which companies, get stuck with the bill.
Don't expect much clarity on that this week. Says a USCAP spokesman: "That's not the purpose of the press conference, to get into the details."
So far, USCAP has given momentum to the broad idea of a U.S. global-warming mandate. The idea remains mushy, though, because the group's members disagree about what a mandate should say. That's a harbinger of the slugfest that lies ahead over what the U.S. should do about energy and the environment.
Write to Jeffrey Ball at jeffrey.ball@wsj.com