Global Warming: House Still Blind

Senators once skeptical about global warming are coming around, taking seriously a bill to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and sensibly shifting their debate from “Is global warming real?” to “How can we prepare for global warming in an economically sensible way?”

But news of global warming’s inevitability apparently has been slower to reach the House of Representatives, which is expected to consider a measure that bars federal officials from taking almost any steps to confront climate change and mitigate its effects. Legislators should resist this backward measure.

On its face, Rep. Jo Ann Emerson’s (R-Mo.) amendment to an appropriations bill only bans government funding for efforts to implement the yet unratified Kyoto accord, an international global warming reduction treaty that Clinton administration officials signed in Japan in 1997. But an Emerson ally, Rep. Joe Knollenberg (R-Mich.), pushed through a similar amendment last year and used it to stymie federal efforts to conduct even the most basic conversations with states, cities and other nations about how to cope with climate change. Knollenberg has charged that such conversations amount to an illegal form of “pro-Kyoto lobbying.”

Legislative and legal challenges of these kinds hamper federal, state and local efforts necessary to prepare for climate change. Last month, for example, a panel of leading scientists told Southern California Metropolitan Water District officials that they should start planning bigger water storage systems now, to handle the heavier but shorter-lived stream flows that will be caused by global warming. Such systems will need federal involvement.

Some House legislators have successfully impeded the Energy Department’s 8-year-old effort to implement new energy standards for hot water heaters, washing machines and other appliances. That’s a shame: The standards encourage the kind of efficient appliances that customers demand in export markets like Europe, that drought-threatened Western states need to reduce water consumption and that many U.S. households would welcome for the utility bill savings.

Emerson and Knollenberg deny any ambitions beyond blocking the Kyoto treaty, which would require the United States to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. But the result of their measures is to distract Congress from identifying and considering reforms that make economic as well as environmental sense in the face of global warming.