Scores of Texas politicians, regulators and industry representatives took aim Tuesday at proposed federal legislation to combat climate change, saying it would cripple the state's economy. The proposed bill would 'make every product that uses energy more expensive, forcing hardworking Texans to bear substantial new costs, and kicking a hole in our state's economic strength,' Gov. Rick Perry said. Perry's comments opened a daylong hearing hosted by the Texas Commission of Environmental Quality, Public Utility Commission and Railroad Commission. It came on the same day as President Barack Obama and other world leaders met at the United Nations in an attempt to build momentum for an international deal to cut emissions of gases linked to global warming. Cap-and-trade The Austin gathering, however, took a different tone, with Perry and others calling on federal lawmakers to reject the climate bill that passed the U.S. House of Representatives in July. The bill is bogged down in the Senate. Its centerpiece is a cap-and-trade program that sets a ceiling on emissions of heat-trapping gases like carbon dioxide and allows industries to trade emission permits or allowances to meet the cap. That could have a disproportionate impact on Texas, which is the nation's leading emitter of carbon dioxide, economists told the state commissions. An analysis by the state comptroller's office concluded Texas could lose 137,000 jobs by 2020 because of the bill, named for sponsors Henry Waxman, D-Calif., and Ed Markey, D-Mass. 'Waxman-Markey will reduce emissions from every industry in Texas,' said Luke Bellsnyder, executive director of the Texas Association of Manufacturers, 'but it won't be from a cap. It will be from plant closures, and those plants will be relocated elsewhere.' Whining or winning? But Tom 'Smitty' Smith, director of the Texas office of Public Citizen, an environmental and consumer advocacy group, said the state's economy would still grow under emissions mandates if Texas made a greater commitment to creating efficient, renewable sources of energy to cut pollution. 'We can quit being whiners and be winners,' Smith said. Some environmentalists, including Smith, took issue with the meeting's agenda, which focused on the potential costs of the proposed federal legislation instead of the risks of doing nothing. In a letter to the commissioners, Jim Marston, Texas director of the Environmental Defense Fund, wrote that the proposed federal legislation should come under scrutiny, 'but until now the studies prepared or cited by Texas state agencies have been disappointing in their limited designs and in many cases outright bias.' As an example of a point worth including in the discussion, he noted recent projections that a large part of the Houston-Galveston petrochemical complex may be flooded because of global warming. matthew.tresaugue@chron.com 