Bush to Shift U.S. Policy on Climate Goals

President Bush today will announce a significant shift in the nation’s strategy to combat global climate change, effectively rejecting a commitment made in 1992 to voluntarily reduce carbon dioxide emissions and instead opting to merely limit their growth.

The centerpiece of the president’s policy links the level of growth of carbon dioxide emissions to the economy’s rate of growth, according to several environmentalists and business representatives who have been briefed by administration officials.

That objective, they said, would allow carbon dioxide emissions to grow at about the same rate they have for the last 10 years.

The White House, in information released late Wednesday, said simply that its policy would reduce the ratio of greenhouse gas emissions to economic output, which it called greenhouse gas intensity, by 18% over 10 years. It did not say how much the emissions would increase over that decade.

“Rather than making drastic reductions in greenhouse gas emissions that would put millions of Americans out of work and undermine our ability to make long-term investments in clean energy--as the Kyoto Protocol would have required, the president’s growth-based approach will accelerate the development of new technologies and encourage partnerships on climate change issues with the developing world,” the White House said.

The expected announcement appears to be a formal rejection of the commitment made by the president’s father, then-President George Bush, at the Rio Earth Summit in 1992. The first President Bush said then that the United States would voluntarily reduce its carbon dioxide emissions to 1990 levels by 2000.

Currently, U.S. emissions of greenhouse gases are about 15% over 1990 levels. Under the current formula, emissions levels in 2020 could be 43% higher than 1990 levels.

“We have an undelivered promise, and now the president is saying he has no intention of delivering on the promise,” said David Hawkins, director of the Natural Resources Defense Council’s climate change center.

The administration spelled out its reasons for walking away from ambitious targets of greenhouse gas reductions in the annual report on the economy by the White House Council of Economic Advisers, which was released last week.

“One of the problems with climate policy over the past decade has been a focus on unreasonable, infeasible targets,” the report says. “The uncertainty surrounding the science of climate change suggests that some modesty is in order. We need to recognize that it makes sense to discuss slowing emissions growth before trying to stop it and eventually reverse it.”

Most scientists believe that human-produced greenhouse gases are largely responsible for the 1-degree increase in average global temperature over the last century. The National Academy of Sciences recently warned that global warming could trigger “large, abrupt and unwelcome” climatic changes that could severely affect ecosystems and human society.

The United States emits about a quarter of the world’s global warming gases, far more than any other country.

So when Bush last year rejected the Kyoto treaty--in which about 40 countries met in Kyoto, Japan, in 1997 and agreed to reduce emissions by an average of 5.2% below 1990 levels--he was roundly criticized by European allies for turning his back on a serious global problem.

Bush has been under diplomatic pressure to announce his global warming policy before he travels to Japan this weekend. Reiterating the president’s objections to the Kyoto accord, spokesman Ari Fleischer said Wednesday that the president believes it would hurt the United States economy and “does not think it is fair” that developing countries such as India and China did not face mandatory carbon dioxide reductions in the first round of the agreement.

“It is not the right remedy to have a massive reduction below 1990 levels,” Fleischer said. “If that were to go into effect, it would have a screeching-halt effect on the economy, and people would lose their jobs as a result.”

The president is not expected to require businesses to report their carbon dioxide emissions or reduce them. Carbon dioxide emissions, the major contributor to global warming from human activity, result from burning coal, gas and oil.

While outlining his climate change policy, the president also is expected to unveil his administration’s proposal for reducing pollutants from electrical power plants, which are responsible for 40% of the nation’s carbon dioxide emissions.

That proposal outlines the administration’s plans for cutting three pollutants--sulfur dioxide, mercury and nitrogen oxide--but it will not mandate that power plants reduce carbon dioxide emissions.

During his campaign, the president pledged to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from power plants, but he reversed that promise early last year. His administration argues that capping carbon dioxide emissions would cripple electricity production from coal, which is abundant, thereby limiting the variety of fuel sources available to utilities. It also would make the country too dependent on dwindling natural gas supplies, the administration says.

The climate change plan includes voluntary programs to encourage companies to reduce their carbon dioxide emissions and modifies an existing program in which companies can voluntarily register their emission-reduction plans. It would also set up a system to ensure that businesses that reduce greenhouse gases now can get credit for those reductions in a future trading system.

Environmentalists criticized the president for failing to set up mandatory programs, stressing that voluntary programs have existed for a decade but carbon dioxide emissions keep increasing.

Jennifer Morgan, who heads the climate change program at the World Wildlife Fund, said the nonbinding target and voluntary programs expected to be proposed by Bush add up to a “Valentine’s Day gift to the coal and oil industry.”

But representatives of the utility industry said voluntary programs are best because they give companies flexibility to develop creative ways to control carbon dioxide emissions without hurting their bottom line.