USA: Hunters and Fishermen in a state of turmoil.
There is a seemingly unlikely lobby that is pressuring the US Senate to pass the bill that reduces greenhouse emissions: American hunting and fishing groups, worried that climate change is damaging their favorite sports.
Hunters and fishermen are mostly the Republican Party's electoral ground, they represent millions of votes in the heart of the US and could help win crucial votes as the Senate prepares to vote on legislation on reducing carbon emissions.
Twenty national hunting and fishing groups urged the senators, in a letter sent in September, to ensure that "the legislation you are considering in the Senate reduces greenhouse emissions and safeguards natural resources."
Among those who want a law that takes this into account are groups that usually do not participate in "liberal" battles, such as the Dallas Safari Club, the National Trappers Association and Pheasants Forever. One of their concerns, for example, is that game will not migrate south if the northern states of the US get warmer.
"If you go out and hunt at the same time in the same season and in the same place every year, you understand the changes that are happening," said Jeremy Symons, senior vice president of the National Wildlife Federation, which has 420 members in the sport in 46 states. .
Such groups are taking sides against Washington's powerful lobbies - the coal and oil industries, for example - who are instead pushing to ease mandatory pollution controls.
The legislation to reduce US CO2 emissions, which for scientists around the world are linked to global warming, is one of President Obama's domestic policy priorities.
The president called on democratic parliamentarians to send the law to its signature before the world summit on climate change is held in Copenhagen in December. But the bill is bogged down in the Senate, where most Republicans and a few moderate Democrats don't want to hear about the prospects for rising energy costs that could ensue.
by Ed Stoddard and Richard Cowan