Rebuffing Bush, 132 Mayors Embrace Kyoto Rules

SEATTLE, May 13 - Unsettled by a series of dry winters in this normally wet city, Mayor Greg Nickels has begun a nationwide effort to do something the Bush administration will not: carry out the Kyoto Protocol on global warming.

Mr. Nickels, a Democrat, says 131 other likeminded mayors have joined a bipartisan coalition to fight global warming on the local level, in an implicit rejection of the administration's policy.

The mayors, from cities as liberal as Los Angeles and as conservative as Hurst, Tex., represent nearly 29 million citizens in 35 states, according to Mayor Nickels's office. They are pledging to have their cities meet what would have been a binding requirement for the nation had the Bush administration not rejected the Kyoto Protocol: a reduction in heat-trapping gas emissions to levels 7 percent below those of 1990, by 2012.

On Thursday, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg brought New York City into the coalition, the latest Republican mayor to join.

Mr. Nickels said that to achieve the 7 percent reduction, Seattle was requiring cruise ships that dock in its bustling port to turn off their diesel engines while resupplying and to rely only on electric power provided by the city, a requirement that has forced some ships to retrofit. And by the end of this year the city's power utility, Seattle City Light, will be the only utility in the country with no net emissions of greenhouse gases, the mayor's office said.

Salt Lake City has become Utah's largest buyer of wind power in order to meet its reduction target. In New York, the Bloomberg administration is trying to reduce emissions from the municipal fleet by buying hybrid electric-gasoline-powered vehicles.

Nathan Mantua, assistant director of the Center for Science in the Earth System at the University of Washington, which estimates the impact of global warming on the Northwest, said the coalition's efforts were laudable, but probably of limited global impact.

"It is clearly a politically significant step in the right direction," Dr. Mantua said. "It may be an environmentally significant step for air quality in the cities that are going to do this, but for the global warming problem it is a baby step."

Mr. Nickels said he decided to act when the Kyoto Protocol took effect in February without the support of the United States, the world's largest producer of heat-trapping gases. On that day, he announced he would try to carry out the agreement himself, at least as far as Seattle was concerned, and called on other mayors to join him.

The coalition is not the first effort by local leaders to take up the initiative on climate change. California, under Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican, is moving to limit carbon dioxide emissions, and Gov. George A. Pataki of New York, also a Republican, has led efforts to reduce power plant emissions in the Northeast. But the coalition is unusual in its open embrace of an international agreement that the Bush administration has spurned, Mayor Nickels's office said, and is significant because cities are huge contributors to the nation's emission of heat-trapping gases.

Michele St. Martin, communications director for the White House Council on Environmental Quality, said the Kyoto Protocol would have resulted in a loss of five million jobs in the United States and could raise energy prices.

Ms. St. Martin said President Bush "favors an aggressive approach" on climate change, "one that fosters economic growth that will lead to new technology and innovation."

But many of the mayors said they were acting precisely out of concern for the economic vitality of their cities. Mr. Nickels, for example, pointed out that the dry winters and the steep decline projected in the glaciers of the Cascade range could affect Seattle's supply of drinking water and hydroelectric power.

The mayor of low-lying New Orleans, C. Ray Nagin, a Democrat, said he joined the coalition because a projected rise in sea levels "threatens the very existence of New Orleans."

In Hawaii, the mayor of Maui County, Alan Arakawa, a Republican, said he joined because he was frustrated by the administration's slowness to recognize the scientific consensus that climate change was happening because of human interference.

"I'm hoping it sends a message they really need to start looking at what's really happening in the real world," Mayor Arakawa said.

Mayor Nickels said it was no accident that most cities that had joined were in coastal states. The mayor of Alexandria, Va., is worried about increased flooding; mayors in Florida are worried about hurricanes.

But Mr. Nickels has also found supporters in the country's interior. Jerry Ryan, the Republican mayor of Bellevue, Neb., said he had signed on because of concerns about the effects of droughts on his farming community. Mr. Ryan described himself as a strong Bush supporter, but said he felt that the president's approach to global warming should be more like his approach to terrorism.

"You've got to ask, 'Is it remotely possible that there is a threat?' " he said. "If the answer is yes, you've got to act now."

Dead on.

The Truth About Kyoto

Why the Global Warming Treaty Will Ultimately Fail by Erin Schiller

While politicians, economists, and environmentalists squabble over the details of Clinton’s global warming proposal for the upcoming summit this December in Kyoto, Japan, everyone seems to have lost the forest for the trees. The debate should not center over how strict the Kyoto Treaty should be, but should emphasize that fact that the Kyoto Treaty is a sham: it will not prevent global warming and is a poor way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

The United States is the most energy efficient and environmentally responsible nation in the world today. We have the strictest and most well inforced set of environmental regulations anywhere. Air pollution for the six major pollutants has significantly decreased over the past 15 years, and over the past 20 years U.S. contributions to carbon dioxide, the leading manmade greenhouse gas, have steadily decreased as well.

The U.S. uses the most advanced technology available to make us more energy efficient than any other nation. For example, India uses three times the energy and emits four times the carbon dioxide per unit of GDP than the U.S., and China use five times the energy and emits eight times the carbon dioxide.

Such facts question the motives behind China and the European Union’s call for stricter reductions of greenhouse gas emissions by developed nations. Environmental record does not show that these countries are more environmentally conscious than the U.S., but the fact that stricter reductions would undoubtedly hurt the U.S.’s international competitiveness would certainly benefit them economically.

If any form of the Kyoto Treaty is signed, it will incur multi-billion costs on the U.S. economy, despite Clinton’s rhetoric about trading programs and tax incentives. Countries in Europe will face economic costs as they too must reduce emissions, but comparatively, the U.S. will by far be hit the hardest because we are already the most energy efficient and are already using the most advanced technology available. And of course China favors stricter controls on American industry because they know that if the Treaty passes, much of that industry will flock straight to China where it can operate free from emissions controls.

While Clinton has stated that developing countries must “meaningfully participate” in emissions reductions, if they are not legally bound, they are not going to jeopardize their economy because they care about the environment. Are we to expect that China, a country that over the past 5 years has illegally transferred missiles and nuclear technology to Pakistan, has illegally transferred missiles to Iran, has repeatedly broken intellectual property rights laws, continues to break international standards of human and religious rights, and most recently may have violated our campaign finance laws is really going to voluntarily cut back on greenhouse gas emissions? Their record so far indicates otherwise.

But without the inclusion of developing countries, global greenhouse gases will continue to increase. By 2025, China will emit more carbon dioxide than the U.S., Japan, and Canada combined. If the goal of the Kyoto Treaty is to prevent global warming by reducing greenhouse gas emissions, it will fail unless the Treaty is globally applied. Yet given the fact that most developing nations cannot even feed their citizens, it is unrealistic to mandate that they divert economic resources to energy efficiency.

Almost every breakthrough environmental technology has come out of the U.S. Most recently, scientists have announced the successful completion of a revolutionary fuel cell operating on gasoline that will double the fuel economy of today’s automobiles and reduce automobile emissions of greenhouse gases by one-half, which currently account for one-third of all greenhouse gas emissions. The last thing the President should do is sign a treaty that will stifle the U.S. economy or hinder international competition, neither of which provide a good environment for innovation or rapid technology development.

The development, production, and export of such technologies much better addresses the problem of greenhouse gas emissions than does a Treaty dependent on inconsistent mandates for some countries and unrealistic expectations for others. The Kyoto Treaty will not only fail to prevent global warming, but it will hinder the very economic growth that stimulates advances in technology and trade that can make all countries, both developing and developed, more energy efficient and environmentally responsible.

http://www.pacificresearch.org/press/opd/1997/97-11-04es.html -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Erin Schiller is a Public Policy Fellow at the California-based Pacific Research Institute.

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