'Cap & Trade' Rebranded 'Pollution Reduction'

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Like a savvy Madison Avenue advertising team, senators pushing climate-control legislation have decided to scrap the name "cap and trade" and rebrand their product as "pollution reduction targets."

A clunky and difficult term to define for laymen and some politicians, "cap and trade" had become dirty words on Capitol Hill in recent months.

Republicans called the plan nothing more than "cap and tax" and one influential senator took great pains last week to declare cap and trade "dead."

Senator Joseph Lieberman, an independent trying to draft a bipartisan bill, said, "We don't use that term anymore."

Instead Lieberman said, laughing: "We will have pollution reduction targets."

But Lieberman did say it was still possible utilities may be subject to a cap and trade system. Senator Thomas Carper, who chairs a clean air panel in the Senate, told Reuters on Tuesday that cap and trade for utilities was the way to go.