Energy issues challenge mindsets …

president, turned up in Cannes last month to promote his new documentary on the dangers of global warming, amid speculation that he may stage a political comeback on the basis of an issue which is increasingly dividing George Bush's administration and the Democrat opposition in the face of rising fuel prices. He arrived in France to showcase An Inconvenient Truth, a film that issues alarming predictions about the effects of global warming. The rising cost globally of gasoline and gas from Russia in Europe is having the indirect effect of bolstering measures to tackle global warming. Rising fossil fuel prices are being seen as a key to future success for the EU's flagging scheme to trade carbon emissions and boost fuel efficiency through market means. In the US, where no such grand schemes exist, the hope is that the price rises will boost the home production and consumption of biofuels, such as ethanol. In a debate last month House Democrats said that the answer to the US's fuel crisis is growing in the fields of rural America, and they introduced bills to expand the production of ethanol. " We can grow new energy at home from American farms " , said South Dakota Democrat, Stephanie Herseth. Democrats on the rural working group introduced bills that call for doubling the percentage of renewable fuels, such as ethanol, sold in the US by 2012 and increasing the percentage of so-called 'flex-fuel' cars capable of running partly on ethanol. The legislation would require that 75 per cent of all US cars be flex-fuel models by 2013. Flex-fuel cars would cost the same as regular cars, the Democrats said. The bills also extend the tax credits for ethanol and biodiesel production through 2015 and News focus The costs and security of energy supplies in the US and Europe, heightened over recent months, are forcing new thinking that may boost climate change measures. Nigel Williams reports. increase tax benefits to small ethanol producers. The legislation also boosts incentives for increasing the number of stations that pump ethanol and biodiesel and calls for greater investment in biofuel research. The European emissions trading scheme was meant to be a market-based solution to the thorny problem of how to cut the amount of carbon dioxide being pumped into the atmosphere by some 12,000 big industrial polluters across the EU between 2005 and 2007 without driving those industries out …