Clear skies for US, gloom for Kyoto

Bush's new environment policy fails to cut gas emissions

Julian Borger in Washington
Friday February 15, 2002
The Guardian Newspaper London

President Bush unveiled an environmental policy yesterday which sharply differed from the international Kyoto agreement on global warming, advocating voluntary instead of mandatory targets for greenhouse gas emissions and setting less ambitious goals.

Under the president's "clear skies and global climate change initiative", the US aims to cut "greenhouse gas intensity" by 18% over the next decade, a reduction in the rate of growth of emissions relative to the growth of the national economy. It does not mean a cut in greenhouse gas emissions, as required by the Kyoto protocol.

Corporations will not be obliged to meet the targets set in the Bush plan, nor will they have to disclose what progress they make to a central emissions registry, in which participation will also be voluntary.

"This constitutes business as usual," said Eileen Claussens, president of the Pew Centre on Global Climate Change. "It just continues the existing path, so that by 2012 the US will be 25% above 1990 emissions levels. Right now it's 14.5% above 1990. There's not even mandatory reporting and disclosure."

The Bush administration had promised to produce an emissions plan after announcing last March that the US had no interest in pursuing the Kyoto approach to global warming, which is based on mandatory reductions of greenhouse emissions for industrialised countries over the next decade.

Last November delegates from 165 countries, not including the US, agreed in Marrakesh that the main industrialised nations should curb greenhouse gas emissions - primarily carbon dioxide - to an average of 5.2% below 1990 levels.

An enforcement system, with international observers and penalties, would be implemented if countries failed to meet their targets.

However, the significance of the Marrakesh agreement is undermined by the refusal of the world's biggest economy to cooperate. European diplomats welcomed the fact that Washington had come up with a plan, but expressed disappointment that the US version was so far from the position taken by the rest of the world.

A Washington-based diplomat said: "One good thing is that it doesn't set itself up as an alternative to Kyoto. The president is saying this is a course for the US to take. He is not suggesting other countries follow. "The other good thing is that they are doing something and recognising global warming as a problem.

"On the other hand, they are not doing what we hoped they would do, which is coming along with the rest of us in Kyoto. Countries going off and setting their own targets is not going to help solve the problem."

Ute Collier, head of the climate change programme at the WWF (formerly the World Wildlife Fund), said: "President Bush must have his head in a bucket if he really thinks this plan is going to help reduce climate change."

"We need absolute greenhouse gas emission reductions if we are going to limit the potentially catastrophic impacts of climate change - not targets arbitrarily linked to the US economy," Dr Collier said.

The "clear skies" initiative repeats earlier stated mandatory curbs on three industrial emissions - sulphur dioxide, nitrogen oxides and mercury - but it will allow industries to buy emission credits allowing them to overshoot targets.

As he announced last year, the president did not include carbon dioxide on the list of restricted emissions, contrary to a pledge made during the 2000 elections.

The plan sets aside $4.6bn (£2.9bn) in tax credits to encourage cutting emissions. The credits will provide incentives for power plants to build power generating windmills, and for households to build solar panels on their homes or buy fuel-efficient cars.

The approach, Mr Bush argued, was based "on the common-sense idea that sustainable economic growth is the key to environmental progress - because it is growth that provides the resources for investment in clean technologies."