White House Nods at British Climate Change Report
Date: 31-Oct-06
Country: US
Author: Deborah Zabarenko, Environment Correspondent
The report by former World Bank chief economist Nicholas Stern said immediate international action to stabilize the greenhouse gas emissions that spur global warming would have economic benefits that would far outweigh the costs.
In an e-mailed statement, the White House Council on Environmental Quality said, "The US government has produced an abundance of economic analysis on the issue of climate change. The Stern Report is another contribution to that effort."
The statement from spokeswoman Kristen Hellmer said the United States is "well on track to meet the president's goal to reduce greenhouse gas intensity of our economy 18 percent by 2012."
The problem, said Annie Petsonk of Environmental Defense, is that this goal essentially requires only the status quo.
"This is just business as usual for this economy," Petsonk said by telephone. "The result is no reduction in America's total greenhouse gas emissions."
The United States is the biggest single source of greenhouse gas emissions in the world, producing 25 percent of greenhouse gases from 5 percent of the global population.
"The United Kingdom is moving forward, the EU is moving forward, the developing countries are moving forward, where is the United States?" Petsonk said.
CAN-DO VS CAN'T DO
Britain is pushing for a framework outside the Kyoto Protocol, an agreement that sought to limit greenhouse gas emissions, that would include the United States and such major developing countries as China and India.
President George W. Bush pulled the United States out of the Kyoto agreement in part because he said it hit jobs.
Stern's report estimates that stabilizing greenhouse gases in the atmosphere will cost about 1 percent of annual global output by 2050. Inaction could cut global consumption per person by between 5 and 20 percent, the report said.
"If the Bush administration is truly on board with this then I think they need to put their money where their mouth is," said Brian Castelli, executive vice president of the Alliance to Save Energy, whose members include US power companies.
Castelli said there must be more investment in energy-efficient technologies, but added that US government budgets for this have dropped by 34 percent since 2002, from US$694 million to US$517 million budgeted for fiscal 2007, which amounts to about US$460 million in 2002 dollars, factoring in inflation.
"How are we going to square up the fact that we need more research, development and deployment dollars through the administration and the fact that they're on board with what the Stern report says (about) deploying those technologies?" Castelli said by telephone.
Dave Hamilton of the environmental group Sierra Club contrasted the Stern review with the White House message.
"We can actually make money by changing our tune here" to limit greenhouse gas emissions, Hamilton said in a telephone interview. "We can do it in a cost-effective way, we can do it in a way that improves our technology ... This is a very can-do report, when what we've heard from the White House is what we can't do."
