A clutch of leading international climate officials and negotiators who descended on Washington this week to press the United States for action on global warming say they got a clear message from the Obama administration and key lawmakers: The question now is not whether the nation will act, but how.
With a new president who has made enacting a cap-and-trade bill one of his top domestic priorities, legislators who will help shape it have begun grappling with the complexity of putting a price on carbon, which would raise energy prices, in the midst of an economic crisis. Behind closed doors, they peppered the foreign leaders and economists, who have years of real-world experience with the issue, with questions about how to make such a system work.
