CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- The West Virginia Conservative Foundation is backing efforts to convince the U.S. Senate to reject new cap-and-trade legislation passed by the House of Representatives last month.

The new legislation would take steps to cut back carbon dioxide emissions in the U.S., particularly those from coal-fired power plants.

During a Tuesday-morning news conference on the Capitol steps, a few people held signs reading, "West Virginia Needs Jobs, Not New Taxes. Say No To Cap & Trade."

Mike Stuart, who heads the Conservative Foundation, said, "I am here as a citizen. My dad is a coal miner. My grandfather died from black lung. ... Food on the table is provided by coal jobs."

Stuart called the new federal bill "a tax on energy, a tax on the public. There is no industry in the country that will not be hurt. Three million jobs will be lost."

Cap-and-trade legislation could increase electric power rates up to 80 percent, Stuart said. "Groceries will also go up and we will lose American jobs."

West Virginia's three House members all voted against the legislation: Democrats Nick J. Rahall and Alan Mollohan and Republican Shelley Moore Capito.

The bill passed by the House, Stuart said, is 1,500 pages long and contains 365 new federal regulations.

Larry Matheney, secretary-treasurer of the West Virginia AFL-CIO, also questions the new legislation.

CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- The West Virginia Conservative Foundation is backing efforts to convince the U.S. Senate to reject new cap-and-trade legislation passed by the House of Representatives last month.

The new legislation would take steps to cut back carbon dioxide emissions in the U.S., particularly those from coal-fired power plants.

During a Tuesday-morning news conference on the Capitol steps, a few people held signs reading, "West Virginia Needs Jobs, Not New Taxes. Say No To Cap & Trade."

Mike Stuart, who heads the Conservative Foundation, said, "I am here as a citizen. My dad is a coal miner. My grandfather died from black lung. ... Food on the table is provided by coal jobs."

Stuart called the new federal bill "a tax on energy, a tax on the public. There is no industry in the country that will not be hurt. Three million jobs will be lost."

Cap-and-trade legislation could increase electric power rates up to 80 percent, Stuart said. "Groceries will also go up and we will lose American jobs."

West Virginia's three House members all voted against the legislation: Democrats Nick J. Rahall and Alan Mollohan and Republican Shelley Moore Capito.

The bill passed by the House, Stuart said, is 1,500 pages long and contains 365 new federal regulations.

Larry Matheney, secretary-treasurer of the West Virginia AFL-CIO, also questions the new legislation.

Matheney believes international trade agreements should require countries like China to follow the same health and safety regulations, women's and human rights laws and environmental regulations that employers in the U.S. must follow.

"We ought to be able to say to China, if we are committed to reducing carbon dioxide emissions, you should reduce your carbon dioxide emissions if you want to continue trading with us," he said Tuesday.

"If we don't make China and our other trading partners follow the same rules, it will destroy what little manufacturing base we have left."

According to a McClatchy Newspapers column by University of Illinois law professor Andrew P. Morriss, the U.S. generates 22.2 percent of the world's carbon dioxide emissions.

Other major producers of carbon dioxide emissions are: China, 18.4 percent; the European Union, 15 percent; Russia, 5.6 percent; India, 4.9 percent; and Japan, 4.6 percent. None of those countries or group of countries has agreed to reduce emissions.

Stuart is inviting the public to attend a "town-hall meeting" the Conservative Foundation will host on July 18 at the Cultural Center between 10:30 a.m. and noon. A public rally will then be held on the Kanawha River side of the Capitol.

Speakers at the meeting will include Capito; Don Nehlen, the former West Virginia University football coach who regularly appears in advertisements for the West Virginia Coal Association; and Charles Wilfong, president of the West Virginia Farm Bureau.

Another rally opposing cap-and-trade legislation, organized by Southern West Virginians for Coal, will begin at 3 p.m. on July 18 at the Beckley/Raleigh County Convention Center.

Reach Paul J. Nyden at pjny...@wvgazette.com or 304-348-5164.