Crossroads on Global Warming (NYT Editorial)

New York Times ^ | June 3, 2002 | Editorial

[The Raven]

s it is required to do under international treaty, the Bush administration has sent to the United Nations a report on global warming that is much more pessimistic than its earlier calculations about the environmental damage that unchecked warming could cause. A White House spokesman, Scott McClellan, said the report is reason "to move forward on the president's strategies for addressing the challenge of climate change." There is only one thing wrong with this picture. President Bush has no serious strategies for climate change.

Indeed, Mr. Bush has essentially withdrawn from the field. He rejected the Kyoto accord on climate change and repudiated a campaign pledge to seek firm limits on carbon dioxide, the main contributor to the warming of the earth's atmosphere. He then proposed a voluntary scheme. It appears from the U.N. report to consist largely of finding ways to adapt to warming instead of preventing it. Congress has done no better.

The only encouraging news is on the state level. Massachusetts and New Hampshire have approved bills aimed at cutting power plant emissions of carbon dioxide. In New York, a commission appointed by Gov. George Pataki will shortly give him a set of aggressive recommendations to help the state reduce its emissions of greenhouse gases.

Encouraging as the state actions are, global warming requires a national response. There is one last chance to get the ball rolling in Congress this term and to send a positive signal to other countries. The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee will soon begin writing a comprehensive air pollution bill. The committee has before it a strong proposal framed by the chairman, James Jeffords, and a less ambitious but useful plan advanced by a few power companies that have at last faced up to their obligation to address the issue. There is no comparable Bush initiative on the table. The Jeffords and industry plans address the four major pollutants: mercury; nitrogen oxides that produce smog; sulfur dioxide, which causes acid rain; and carbon dioxide. Mr. Bush's sketchy "Clear Skies" proposal addresses only the first three.

To Mr. Jeffords, that makes the Bush plan a nonstarter. What's interesting is that some of the president's putative allies among the power companies — including Northeastern utilities like Consolidated Edison and Public Service Electric and Gas of New Jersey — see things the same way. The reason is summed up in what managers like to call "business certainty." They know that carbon dioxide will eventually be regulated, and they would like to begin now to tailor investment strategies to deal with all four pollutants at once. The technologies that work for mercury, sulfur and nitrogen oxide — so-called "end of pipe" controls like scrubbers — do virtually nothing to reduce carbon dioxide. But there are other strategies — switching to cleaner fuels, investing in "clean coal" technologies and alternative fuels, making existing plants more efficient — that could help utilities respond to clean air concerns in a more coordinated, cost-efficient way.

Unfortunately, the biggest and dirtiest utilities, which make the most noise in Congress and are also among Mr. Bush's biggest contributors, hate the four-pollutant approach because they rely almost entirely on coal and their cleanup costs are likely to be quite large. Senator Jeffords's task is to make sure that his bill commands a big enough majority in his committee to justify bringing it to the Senate floor, where a brutal battle awaits.

The Senate may be as far as any bill goes — the House has not been hospitable to imaginative thinking on energy and the environment. But it's important to get a good plan on the table before the fall elections, and to start moving the country along the right path. The choices could not be clearer. One is to continue to rely on older technologies that condemn us to a future of polluted cities and further warming. The other is to redesign our energy system so as to reduce America's dependence on carbon-based fuels and send a signal to the rest of the world that we are finally getting serious about climate change. </N

[The Raven]

This editorial conflicts with the Drudge hysteria.

The problem with the NYT "solution" is growth. The combustion of natural gas will soon bring emissions back to current levels (with coal)

They just delay the same result by 4 years or so. And at great costs.

[Ken in Denver]

First, carbon dioxide can hardly be a pollutant. Does no one these days remember being taught about the carbon dioxide/oxygen cycle- animals take in oxygen and exhale carbon dioxide and plants take in carbon dioxide and give off oxygen via photosynthesis. Carbon dioxide is also produced by all forms of combustion of organic material, whether it be power production or wildfires, internal combustion engines or decomposing vegetation. Using "clean fuels" won't reduce carbon dioxide at all, although other emissions such as sulfur dioxides may be reduced. In fact, synthetically produced clean fuels such as "clean coal" or hydrogen require energy to produce them. Most advocates of various solutions to the cabon dioxide "problem" fail to look at the entire energy prodution cyle involved, for example, the power production needed to recharge battery powered automobiles. If atmospheric warming is in fact occurring, and is caused by man's activities (not proven) the most straight-forward solution is nuclear power, a clean, safe, proven, currently available technology.

[texson66]

People,people, learn the truth about GoreBull Warming by clicking on the Taz!

[Tarheel-CRH]

Outrageous! Bush has dismissed science in favor of politically correct environmentalism.

[rambo316]

I don''t get a chance to listen but I wonder how Rush, Hannity and all the others are going to spin Bush's capitulation to the Commie enviro wackos.

This is a sad day. What do all you cool-aid drinkers have to say about Bush moving way left? I know, I know you all will say that this is just politics.

Let me just say my Freeper friends, we are in deep DoDo.

[The Raven]

>>Outrageous! Bush has dismissed science in favor of politically correct environmentalism.

No...from the NYT article today on the report:

"It recommends adapting to inevitable changes. It does not recommend making rapid reductions in greenhouse gases to limit warming, the approach favored by many environmental groups and countries that have accepted the Kyoto Protocol, a climate treaty written in the Clinton administration that was rejected by Mr. Bush."

"The new document, "U.S. Climate Action Report 2002," strongly concludes that no matter what is done to cut emissions in the future, nothing can be done about the environmental consequences of several decades' worth of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases already in the atmosphere."

[Tribune7]

Nukes are the answer. (That would be a great song title)

[SW6906]

"switching to cleaner fuels, investing in "clean coal" technologies..."

Kinda hard to do, NYT, when your beloved President Clinton nationalized the nation's largest deposits of clean coal in Utah, making them a park in order to enrich his buddies in Indonesia.......

[Eric in the Ozarks]

The problem with Kyoto is (was for the US) its become little more than a transfer payment system from the people who produce to the people who don't.

[pjd]

Apparently, other threads here on FR dissect the NYT spin on the report and it doesn't represent a change in the Bush Administration policy.

Global Warming is really two issues: 1) Is the Earth warming? 2) Does Human activity play a role?

Anyone even remoely familiar with Earth's geological history knows that the Earth is only just coming out of the last Ice Age and is heading for a 100 million year long inter-glacial period where temperatures are higher than what we've been used to. That is inevitable.

To blame warming on Human activity is merely a political opportunity. As the temperatures continue to (naturally) warm, the politicians will continue to blame Human activity and insist that we need even more controls and regulations. Since the environment touches everything, everything is fair-game for government control as long as the people can be fooled into beliving that Human activity is the cause.

Our real goal should be, not to simply dispute Global Warming, since we know it is a part of Earth's natural cycle. Instead, we should be clearly demonstrating to people the naturalness of warming, and the futility of Human activity to affect it.

That is the only way we can win.

[Ole Okie]

Using "clean fuels" won't reduce carbon dioxide at all, although other emissions such as sulfur dioxides may be reduced.

Somehow in all the furor, I think this simple fact has been lost; that combining carbon and oxygen results in CO (incomplete combustion) and/or CO2 (complete combustion).

The environmentalists have so confused the landscape by not discriminating between sulfur, oxides of sulfur, oxides of nitrogen, the freons, water vapor, and CO2 that I honestly doubt that more than a figurative handful of Americans understand the simple fact you've stated.

Methane, CH4, is the predominant constituent of natural gas. Complete combustion yields carbon dioxide and water (plus the nitrogen in the combustion air).

[SW6906]

You are ever-so-correct!

[pjd]

Thanks.

[finnman69]

People REALLY should read the actual report and NOT trust the NY Times editorial to get the facts on what has been announced, when it has been announced and what the Bush administration has essentially released in this report.

Click here

The summary could be some elements of global warming and the effects of climate change are real, but Bush's proposals include VOLUNTARY reductions in emissions.

[Eric in the Ozarks]

Correct, sir. Nat gas pollutes, too.

[Free the USA]

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