A report on climate change was released by the US Environmental
Protection Agency in early June, prompting criticism from the US energy
industry and a hasty disavowal of the document by George W. Bush.
The US Climate Action Report - produced by the EPA as a “national
communication” under the UN Framework - states that climate change is
occurring, that part of that change is caused by human activity, and
that carbon dioxide released to the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels
is a main cause of that change.
The report disappointed climate activists, however, in that it did not
commit the US to any action. Instead, the authors call for more
research into climate change and a continuation of business-friendly
policies such as the Administration’s voluntary national “greenhouse
gas intensity” target and non-mandatory corporate reporting of
emissions.
Patrick Mazza, Research Director of the Earth Island project Climate
Solutions, describes the EPA report as an attempt to subsidize the
energy industry. “What this report says in essence is global warming is
coming, it’s going to be serious, but just lay back and take it,” Mazza
told EIJ.
“It lets the fossil fuel industry interests go scot-free and asks the
rest of us to absorb the costs, which it acknowledges will be huge.”
Still, the report prompted protest from the US energy industry,
culminating in the Bush Administration’s distancing itself from the
report. Within hours of the report’s release, President Bush reacted in
a manner characterized by the Associated Press as dismissive. “I read
the report put out by the bureaucracy,” Bush said.
At the same time, Japan and the member nations of the European Union
ratified the 1997 Kyoto Protocol to the UN Framework Convention on
Climate Change, while Australia’s Prime Minister pledged that nation
would follow the US in continuing to reject the Kyoto accord.
Among other requirements, the Kyoto Protocol binds signing
industrialized nations to reduce emissions of “greenhouse gases” to 95
percent of 1990 emission levels by 2012. The United States’ CO2
emissions are now about 112 percent of their 1990 levels. The US, which
accounts for a quarter of the world’s CO2 emissions, has rejected the
protocol, claiming until the publication of the EPA report that the
jury was still out on human contributions to global climate change, and
that Kyoto would damage the US economy.
On the heels of Bush’s affirmation of the US climate policy status quo,
the Prime Minister of Australia - a net energy exporting nation -
blasted the Protocol. In a speech to Parliament on World Environment
Day (June 5), John Howard said “[F]or us to ratify the protocol would
cost us jobs and damage our industry.”
Despite Australia’s taking the US’ side in the dispute, some long-time
Kyoto Protocol observers have ventured that Bush’s dropping out of the
Protocol may actually speed the creation of effective climate change
policies elsewhere in the world. In a February article in The American Spectator,
Ross Gelbspan predicted that “Despite [Kyoto’s] loopholes, minimal
goals, and lack of an enforcement mechanism, it does at last provide an
international framework for diminishing the climate crisis. And with
the absence of recalcitrant, foot-dragging US delegates, other
countries may find it easier to promote more aggressive approaches to
reversing climate change.”
In fact, despite recent observations of US pundits that US stonewalling
on Kyoto spelled the death of the treaty, the Kyoto Protocol may become
binding on the 186 nations that have signed on to the UN Framework.
With Japan and the 15 EU nations having ratified the Kyoto Protocol,
and with Canada and Russia expected to follow suit sometime this year,
only two more nations would need to sign on to make Kyoto a reality,
with 55 percent of signatories having ratified the protocol.
Meanwhile, the global climate seems not to be waiting for the world’s
nations to make up their minds. The US National Climatic Data Center
reports that each of the first four months of 2002 were either the
warmest or second-warmest on record for the US. The Larsen B ice shelf
collapsed during Antarctica’s summer this year, and a giant iceberg
calved from the southern continent’s Ross Ice Shelf. Scientists with
the British Antarctic Survey speculate that massive Antarctic bergs
could disrupt the flow of the Gulf Stream, further altering the world’s
climate.
Climate Action Report 2002: www.epa.gov/globalwarming/publications/car
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