US Keen to Rejoin Global Warming Debate
Date: 21-Apr-04
Country: FRANCE
Author: Marguerita Choy
Mike Leavitt, the new head of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) of the Bush administration, is meeting this week with environment ministers at an Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) forum in Paris.
"(I will) make clear that the United States continues to have an interest in success of the OECD and that we want to be full participants in matters relating to the environment," Leavitt told Reuters on Monday ahead of the OECD meeting.
Relations between the U.S. and most other industrialized countries on environmental issues have deteriorated since President Bush's administration withdrew in 2001 from the Kyoto treaty limiting greenhouse gas emissions saying it was too expensive and unfairly excluded developing nations.
Leavitt said the Bush administration was maintaining its stance against mandatory rules to reduce its emissions of greenhouse gases represented by the 1997 United Nations protocol.
"Given the president's and the country's position on Kyoto, I don't have more to add. But we are moving on what I would deem to be an aggressive and deliberate strategy and we are seeing substantial impact and progress and I am optimistic we will see more," Leavitt said.
He reiterated President Bush's target to reduce greenhouse gas emissions per dollar of gross domestic product (GDP) by 18 percent by 2012 from 2002 levels. This means in practice that if GDP were to grow by more than 18 percent over those 10 years there would be an actual increase in emissions.
The Kyoto commitment by the U.S., responsible for 36 percent of the world's greenhouse gases, would have been to reduce its emissions by seven percent of 1990 levels by 2012, but these have steadily increased over the last decade.
But Leavitt said the U.S. has boosted investment in the emissions reduction for this year to $4.3 billion, compared to over $20 billion over the past 13 years.
The EPA is also implementing five rules that will reduce ozone, haze or fine particles, mercury, sulphur dioxide and nitrogen oxide emissions from power plants and diesel pollution from construction, farming and industrial engines.
"Between these five rules, we have begun the next chapter on the American commitment to clean air, which will be one of the most productive periods of air quality improvement in our nation's history and will make a substantial contribution to clean air worldwide," Leavitt said.
Leavitt said he will be the first EPA administrator to tackle mercury pollution from the largest unregulated source, coal-fired power plants, which emit mercury through their smokestacks.
He defended the EPA, which has been bitterly criticized for relaxing pollution rules to benefit various industries with the attorney-generals of 10 states and 45 U.S. senators asking it to write stronger rules.
"It's important to clarify some fictions that have crept in ... those critics who say that we don't see mercury as a toxin. The fact is we do and we regulate it as such," Leavitt said.
"Another fiction is that we are standing back from our previous commitments. The fact is that mercury has never been regulated from power plants before and that we will implement it for the first time in American history and will reduce it by 70 percent, depending on how quickly technology becomes available."
