Climate activist and former Vice President Al Gore testified before the House Energy and Commerce Committee on Friday, urging passage of climate change legislation this year.
The legislation is crucial to international climate change negotiations, he said.
"If the administration went to this global negotiation without this legislation, then I think we might well see a slow-motion collapse of the (climate change) negotiations."
The House Energy and Commerce Committee held four days of hearing last week to discuss a draft climate change bill that would create a cap-and-trade system for carbon emissions and require utilities to produce 25% of their electricity from renewable sources by 2025.
"I believe this legislation has the moral significance equivalent to that of the civil rights legislation of the 1960s and the Marshall Plan of the late 1940s," Gore said in his opening statement.
Former Republican speaker of the House New Gingrich also spoke on Friday, opposing all but a few aspects of the draft legislation.
Republicans said they are putting together their own climate proposal that would scrap the cap-and-trade system. Representative Joe Barton (R-Texas) said the GOP Republican proposal will call for expanding nuclear energy and pumping more money into ways to capture carbon from coal-burning power plants. That proposal has yet to be unveiled.
Watch a portion of Al Gore's testimony at the link below.
