A Free Market Response to Electricity Deregulation; Congressional Republicans Aim to Stop Kyoto

by William Yeatman on April 15, 1998

in Politics

Electricity Deregulation

On March 25 the Clinton Administration announced its Comprehensive Electricity Competition Plan. The plan, according to the Administration will save consumers $20 billion per year or $230 per household, while providing substantial environmental benefits.

The plan includes various environmental provisions that the Administration claims will produce cleaner air and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Three billion dollars will be provided for the Public Benefits Fund to support conservation and energy efficiency measures, research and development for clean technologies, and deployment of renewable energy technologies. A Renewable Portfolio Standard will require that a minimum of 5.5 percent of electricity produced come from non-hydroelectric, renewable sources, subject to a cost cap. The plan also calls for emission trading authority for nitrous oxide emissions as well as consumer information requirements so that consumers can choose power from cleaner sources. The administration estimates that these measures will reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 25 to 40 million metric tons in 2010 (U.S. Newswire, March 25, 1998).

Strong opposition from Congress prompted the Administration to drop a proposal by the Environmental Protection Agency to include a provision to limit carbon dioxide emissions, angering environmentalists. But the Administration said the proposal may resurface before the environmental committees of Congress who may be more sympathetic to the Kyoto Protocol.

The EPA is claiming partial victory, however. The plan gives EPA “streamlined authority . . . to cap nitrous oxide emissions a minor greenhouse gas already regulated by the agency.” They hope that this “important precedent” will lead to additional, far-reaching authority, enabling them to put a carbon emissions cap in place by 2008 (The Washington Times, March 27, 1998).

A Free Market Response to Electricity Deregulation

Competitive Enterprise Institute fellow in regulatory studies, Wayne Crews criticized President Clintons electricity deregulation plan, saying, “If the Clinton Administrations Comprehensive Electricity Competition Plan is to deregulate electricity, government oversight of the power industry must decrease. That doesnt happen here.”

Crews also argues that proper deregulation would abolish franchise monopolies, which may actually help renewable energies to compete in a more naturally evolving marketplace. “Mandatory access offers no end to regulation. But abolishing [monopolistic] franchises instead will give energy entrepreneurs large, small, and renewable the freedom they need to thrive,” said Crews (www.cei.org).

Congressional Republicans Aim to Stop Kyoto

In a speech to utility executives at the Edison Electric Institute CEO meeting Rep. James F. Sensenbrenner, Jr. (R-Wisc.) said that the Kyoto Protocol is “fatally flawed.” Citing a study by Charles River Associates, Sensenbrenner pointed out that compliance with the treaty would cost the U.S. $230 million and 3 million jobs in 2030.

He also discussed the tradition of withholding international treaties from the Senate. Past presidents have withheld treaties from Senate ratification for long periods of time. The 1949 Genocide Treaty, for example, was not sent to the Senate for ratification until 1989. Sensenbrenner said that the Senate may hold up something that Clinton really wants, such as nuclear disarmament, to force submission of the Kyoto Protocol.

Another fear is that the Clinton Administration may try to implement the protocol using existing authorities under the Clean Air Act. Sensenbrenner foresees a constitutional confrontation in the event of such attempts by the administration.

Sen. Larry Craig (R-Idaho), chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committees forest subcommittee, hopes to avoid such a confrontation by creating a “brick wall” which would remove all money earmarked for global warming research from the budgets of the Environmental Protection Agency, the Departments of Agriculture and Energy, and the Army Corps of Engineers (The Electricity Daily, March 30, 1998).

Sensenbrenner also told the executives that educating the American public about the costs of implementing the protocol was key to its defeat. “If we tell the people how much its going to cost . . . the American people will be outraged,” he said (BNA Daily Environment Report, March 27, 1998).

Also in a dear colleague letter Rep. Sensenbrenner and Rep. John Dingell (D-Mich.), ranking Democrat on the House Commerce Committee called on President Clinton to scrap the Kyoto Protocol in light of the “arrogance” displayed in remarks (reported in our last issue) made by Raul Estrada-Oyuela, chair of the Kyoto conference. Estrada criticized the U.S. Congress suggesting that “perhaps they should get in touch with the rest of the world” (Greenwire, March 23, 1998).

You Be the Judge

The Clinton administration cant seem to get its story straight with regards to implementation of the Kyoto Protocol. In February, Under Secretary of State Stuart Eizenstat told the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations that “We have no intention through the back door or anything else, without Senate confirmation, of trying to impose or take any steps to impose what would be binding restrictions on our companies, on our industry, on our business, on our agriculture, on our commerce, or on our country, until and unless, the Senate of the United States says so.”

In December 1997 Vice President Al Gore said, “Whether there is an agreement in Kyoto or not, the United States is prepared, under President Clintons leadership, to unilaterally take steps that we believe should be taken in order to deal with this problem.”

And on March 31, 1998 President Bill Clinton said at a roundtable in Botswana that the U.S. is “implementing an aggressive plan to reduce” greenhouse gas emissions (Agence France Press, March 31, 1998). Who is telling the truth? You be the judge.

Supertrees; CO2 Eating Algae

by William Yeatman on April 15, 1998

in Science

Supertrees

Scientists at Japans Toyota Motor Corp. have reported that through genetic engineering they enhanced the ability of trees to absorb vehicle emissions. It takes 20 regular trees to absorb the annual emissions of one car, but Toyotas scientists say they can improve this performance by 30 percent. They have already created trees that absorb nitrous oxides by doubling the number of chromosomes in experimental trees widening air inlets on stems and leaves.

Some environmentalists, however, are not pleased. “If we want to reduce [nitrous oxide], we should reduce our automobile production and set lower emission standards,” says Yuichi Sato, deputy director of research at Japans Forestry Agency (Business Week, March 30, 1998).

CO2 Eating Algae

Yoshihisa Nakano, a professor of nutrition chemistry at Osaka Prefecture University says that manmade carbon dioxide could be used to breed a single-cell algae called euglena. Euglena, which is used to feed cultivated fish, increases survival ratios among stocks. Nakano also believes that the algae could be used to feed domestic livestock and maybe even humans.

Nakano discovered that the algae reproduces most rapidly in air containing 15-20 percent carbon dioxide and his studies indicate that one-hectare tank of the cultivated algae would absorb about 410 tons of carbon dioxide (The Daily Yomiuri, March 31, 1998).

United States Compliance Costs; Canadas Compliance Costs

by William Yeatman on April 3, 1998

in Blog

United States Compliance Costs

A study by the non-partisan Wharton Econometrics Forecasting Associates (WEFA, Inc.) outlines the state-by-state costs of complying with the Kyoto Protocol for the United States. The U.S. agreed to reduce its emissions to 7 percent below 1990 levels by 2008-2012. This means that the U.S. will have to reduce its emissions by 40 percent below levels predicted by the year 2010.

The study shows, for example, that California would lose approximately 300,000 jobs and wages would fall by as much as 3.2 percent. Energy prices would rise significantly. Residential electricity rates would increase by 29 percent, home heating oil by 53 percent and natural gas by 52 percent.

Other states would be similarly damaged. New York and Texas, for example, would lose 110,000 and 123,000 jobs respectively. New Yorks residential electricity rates would increase by 37.7 percent while Texass increase by 58.7 percent. Higher energy prices, of course, would lead to higher grocery, housing and medical costs. The state-by-state breakdown of WEFAs estimates of the costs of Kyoto can be found at www.rnc.org/news/kyoto.

Canadas Compliance Costs

According to Carl Sonnen, an economist with the Ottawa-based Informetrica, compliance with the Kyoto Protocol will cost Canadians $100 billion over the next 15 years. But, says Sonnen, the costs of inaction would be even higher. In Kyoto Canada agreed to reduce greenhouse gases 6 percent below 1990 levels by 2008-2012.

Canadas Environment Minister Christine Stewart and Natural Resources Minister Ralph Goodale have refused to give any estimates as to the costs of compliance. But Stewarts spokesman, Mark Colpitts, conceded that the $100 billion figure is in agreement with various macro-economic studies on the issue. The study, however, does not take into account ingenuity and technological development, Colpitts added (Calgary Herald, March 10, 1998).

Natural Disaster Research

The Bermuda a Biological Station for Research, which has been carrying out research on the relationship between the ocean and the atmosphere since 1903, has teamed up with the insurance industry to create the Risk Prediction Initiative (RPI) to facilitate communication between scientists and the industry to better assess and manage climate-related risks.

A report released by the RPI came to the following conclusions:

  • “In the 1970s, 1980s, and early 1990s, tropical cyclone activity in the Atlantic Ocean was below average of the past 50-100 years, and large increases in coastal population and development occurred during this lull.”

  • “Increased coastal development in the primary cause of recent dramatic increases in the damage faced by society and insurers. Natural fluctuations in tropical cyclone frequency are another factor. The media and various advocacy groups often incorrectly attribute increased damages to global warming, but they are probably not so attributable” (Failsafe, March 1998).

Another report by Munich Re, the worlds top reinsurance company, shows that “Worldwide losses, economic and insured, from natural catastrophes last year were half those of 1996,” although “overall losses from catastrophes have generally increased over the last 10 years.” The report shows that even with inflation factored in “economic losses [of the last 10 years] are eight times as high and insured losses 14 times greater,” than the decade of the 1960s.

The report also warns, “The emerging phenomenon of climate change, which is expected to further compound the catastrophe risk in the future, continues to be a very serious danger.” The reports does not seem, however, to factor in increases in development in disaster prone areas (Journal of Commerce, March 13, 1998).

Backdoor Implementation; The Greens Success at Kyoto; Goodbye Emission Trading?

by William Yeatman on April 3, 1998

in Kyoto Negotiations, Politics

Backdoor Implementation

Some Senators fear that Undersecretary of State Stuart Eizenstat misled them when he told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that “We have no intention, through the backdoor or anything else, without Senate confirmation, of trying to impose or take any steps to impose what would be binding restrictions on our companies, on our industry, on our business, or on our agriculture, or on our commerce, or on our country until and unless the Senate of the United States says so.”

The key verb in Eizenstats statement, however, is “binding.” The administration, The Weekly Standard (March 16, 1998) points out, will “threaten, cajole, plead with, urge, and cheerlead the states into abiding by Kyoto. And they will do it through the front doors, back doors, side doors, and trap doors, whether the Senate approves or not. Theyll just never do anything binding.”

Indeed, a confidential Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) document suggests that the Clinton Administration may be trying to implement the treaty without Senate ratification. The document argues that the EPA has the necessary authority under the existing Clean Air Act to restrict carbon dioxide emissions without Congressional approval. The document states that power plant “emissions must be reduced in order to fulfill the administrations commitment to clean air and to meet our greenhouse gas emissions budget under the Kyoto Protocol.” The EPA, however, would prefer to get clearer regulatory authority from Congress.

The document also reveals that the EPA wishes to implement a comprehensive regulatory scheme, which would include emission trading, in conjunction with electricity deregulation. But concedes, “these current authorities do not easily lend themselves to establishing market-based cap-and-trade programs.”

Moreover, in testimony before the House VA, HUD, and Independent Agencies Appropriations Committee, Carol Browner, Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, told committee members that “This budget reflects the Presidents determination that through the Research Fund for America the U.S. will lead the world in meeting the challenge of global warming by reducing greenhouse gases and doing so in a way that grows the economy.

The Climate Change Technology Initiative, a multi-Agency initiative including EPA, DOE, and HUD will enable us to meet that challenge. EPAs share . . . at $205 million, will help America meet its global new [sic] responsibility to reduce greenhouse gas emissions through market forces, new technology, and energy efficiency. EPA will work with industry to find sensible, cost-effective ways to meet the global warming challenge, all the while continuing on a path of economic growth.”

Seeking clarification on the Administrations position, Senators Trent Lott (R-MS), Jesse Helms (R-NC) and Chuck Hagel (R-NE) sent a letter to President Clinton on March 3 asking him to personally assure them that there are no plans to implement the treaty without Senate ratification. Rep. David McIntosh (R-IN) announced plans to monitor any such “implementation without raticification” in his House Subcommittee.”

The Greens Success at Kyoto

In a December 11, 1997 memo, Tom Wathen, Executive Vice President of the National Environmental Trust (NET), brags about their successes at the United Nations climate change conference in Kyoto, Japan. NET, formerly known has the Environmental Information Center, works to disseminate information to activists and the media on environmental issues to advance specific campaigns.

Wathen says that the campaigns “success did not come about from just two days or even two weeks of negotiations. The developments that ultimately made success at Kyoto possible were brought about as a result of two years of work by NETs campaign.” Over that two years NET “educated hundreds of reporters on the science and policy of climate change so that industry did not have a free hand in framing the debate.”

The result of this extended campaign, according to Wathen, is that “In a change from just six months ago, most media stories no longer presented global warming as just a theory over which reasonable scientists could differ. Most stories described predictions of global warming as the position of the overwhelming number of mainstream scientists.”

Other successes claimed by NET was assuring that “credible” scientists like Ben Santer and Ross Gelbspan [sic] were able to respond to “industry misinformation.” They also claimed credit for drawing attention to the “industry misinformation campaign by succeeding in getting CNN to suspend temporarily inaccurate industry advertising on the subject.” NET also takes credit for placing op-eds by Enron CEO Kenneth Lay, former UK environment minister John Gummer, and Michael Grubb of Londons Royal Institute of International Affairs,” among others.

Enrons spokesperson Carol Hensley confirmed NETs involvement in drafting Lays op-ed and said it was placed through Knight-Ridder and appeared in a number of newspapers, according to the Science & Environmental Policy Project (The Week That Was, January 19-25, 1998, www.sepp.org).

The memo stresses the importance of effective visuals. Wathen writes, “the principle problem with television coverage of climate change issues is that there are limited visuals to work with. Reporters can only run the stock footage of hurricanes and drought-parched fields so many times. So NET developed a series of computer animations showing progressive inundation of 15 U.S. cities as the climate warms. The animations spurred dozens of stories and ran on ABC, NBC, CBS, and CNN, and we fed them to local stations by satellite.”

Goodbye Emission Trading?

The Clinton Administration has made a lot out of its ability to negotiate a protocol that includes emission trading because they claim trading will significantly reduce compliance costs. Not so fast. The latest word from Raul Estrada-Oyuela, the head of the United Nations commission that negotiated the pact, is that emission trading may be phased out after eight years.

Emission trading, according to Estrada, may discourage developing countries from participating in the Kyoto Protocol. Developing countries worry that emission trading would allow developed countries to pollute. “We want to make sure were not creating a new crop for nations to sell,” Estrada said (Wall Street Journal, March 17, 1998).

While visiting the U.S. Estrada also discussed other issues related to global warming negotiations. As to the likelihood of developing country participation he does not see binding limits being imposed on developing nations in Buenos Aires. A framework for voluntary controls on developing country emissions is the most “optimistic” scenario. China, of course, has remained adamantly opposed to emission controls, voluntary or otherwise.

The private sector, said Estrada, is critical in achieving emissions reductions in the developing countries. He believes that the billions of dollars of foreign direct investment should be channeled into efficient technology through policy changes in both developed and developing countries.

The Kyoto Protocols enforcement mechanism will consist of progress reports produced by the participating country. Review teams will examine the reports and pass them along to the conference of parties, Estrada explained. This type of enforcement mechanism has worked well under the Montreal Protocol, according to Estrada. “Commitments either are fulfilled or non-compliance will be exposed,” Estrada said. Countries will not want to be exposed as not complying with international agreements.

Finally, Estrada estimated that it will be at least three years before the United States ratifies the Kyoto Protocol (BNA Daily Environment Report, March 17, 1998).

Satellite Data Under Attack; Global Warming and Vector-Borne Disease; Trees on the March

by William Yeatman on April 3, 1998

in Science

Satellite Data Under Attack

There is little doubt that the political debate surrounding global warming has turned science into a political tool that threatens the credibility of the scientific community. The most recent evidence of this is a scientific paper, submitted on February 23 to Nature by physicist Dr. Frank Wentz, a remote-sensing expert. Wentz claims to have found an error in the satellite data that, when corrected for, reveals a slight warming trend instead of a slight cooling trend the weather satellites have been tracking since 1979.

Drs. Roy Spencer of NASA and John Christy of the University of Alabama, Huntsville, who manage the satellite data, reject the papers conclusions. They have found two countervailing effects orbital procession and a calibration drift on radiometers that create a false warming. The false cooling and false warming effects cancel each other out leaving the cooling trend intact. Furthermore, the satellite temperature data closely tracks temperature readings from weather balloon radiosondes which do not experience any of the warming or cooling anomalies present in the satellite data.

The disturbing aspect of this story is how the paper was distributed prior to being peer-reviewed, to the Clinton Administration, Robert Watson, chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, various government-funded global warming scientists and very likely the press. Moreover, the paper has been rushed through peer-review a process that normally takes between four and six months.

For more information on this story see www.vision.net.au/~daly/ and www.sepp.org.

Global Warming and Vector-Borne Disease

One of the scary scenarios repeated ad nauseum has been global warming induced spread of malaria, dengue, and yellow fever to higher latitudes in the temperate regions and higher altitudes in the tropics. As with so many warming claims (including the global warming hypothesis itself) a little historical perspective reveals the silliness of these concerns.

A letter published in the British medical journal The Lancet (March 14, 1998) by Dr. Paul Reiter with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Dengue Branch, discusses the past of these diseases. “Until the 20th century,” writes Reiter, “malaria was a common disease throughout much of the USA, and it remained endemic until the 1950s.” Yellow and dengue fever were also common until the 1940s.

He also writes that “Even in the present century, devastating epidemics [of malaria] occurred as far north as Archangel on the Arctic Circle, and the disease remained endemic in such untropical countries as Holland, Poland, and Finland until after World War II.”

Recent malaria epidemics such as the one in Madagascar have been blamed on global warming. Rieter, however, points out that “they occurred well below the maximum altitude for transmission and were clearly a sequel to a breakdown of control infrastructure. Moreover, similar epidemics had taken place in the same areas in 1878 and 1895, and local records show no great change in temperature.”

Dr. Reiter concludes, “The distortion of science to make predictions of unlikely public-health disasters diverts attention from the true reasons for the recrudescence of vector-borne diseases. These include the large-scale resettlement of people (often associated with major ecological change), rampant urbanization without adequate infrastructure, high mobility through air travel, resistance to antimalarial drugs, insecticide resistance, and the deterioration of vector-control operations and other public-health practices.”

Trees on the March

Another environmentalist bugaboo is about to fall by the wayside. Environmentalists have been predicting that rapid global warming would lead to the mass extinction of trees because they would be unable to migrate fast enough to cope with changing temperatures. However, The New York Times (March 10, 1998) reports on research showing that “many of the most important and valued species of trees have in the past migrated fast enough to keep up with temperature changes as least as large and rapid as the global warming of 2 to 6 degrees Fahrenheit that is predicted, as an annual average, over the next 100 years.”

According to Louis F. Pitelka, an ecologist at the University of Marylands Appalachian Laboratory this “downgrade[s] the rate of migration as an issue” in climate change. Some have suggested that humans have fragmented the natural landscape to such an extent that it may hinder the tree migration in the case of global warming. But, says Dr. Dorothy M. Peteet, a paleoecologist with the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, if the climate were to warm quickly, “I would think the trees would do exactly what they did in the old days.”

El Nio Is No Child of Global Warming

According to research at Australias Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO), El Nio events in the 1990s cannot be blamed on manmade global warming. The researchers, led by Dr. Rob Allan of CSIROs Division of Atmospheric Research, spent eight months analyzing global climatic records from the last 125 years. The data collected at 700 land locations and by ships showed no correlation between global warming and El Nio events.

The research did, however, discover other climatic factors that influence the frequency and nature of El Nio. “I have found,” said Dr. Allan, “two additional longer climatic fluctuations [fluctuations in atmospheric pressure and sea-surface temperature] linked with El Nio. One occurs every 11 to 13 years; the other, every 15 to 20 years.”

These fluctuations, says Allan, “are occurring at the same time as the El Nio that we tend to focus on with the two- to seven-year time frame,” and have “probably occurred for thousands of years.” They interact with El Nio in such a way that they sometimes reinforce it and dampen it at other times. “Its the interaction between the three climatic patterns that is giving us the variations that we see, like long El Nio sequences in the 1990s,” Dr. Allan said. “At the moment, we dont know what the physical mechanisms underlying them are” (The Canberra Times, March 10, 1998).

Cost-Free Treaty; Can Federal R&D Do the Job?;

by William Yeatman on March 12, 1998

in Blog

Cost-Free Treaty

The Clinton Administration has finally released its official economic analysis of the Kyoto Protocol. Testifying before the House Commerce Committee on March 4, 1998, Janet Yellen, chairman of the Presidents Council on Economic Advisors, stated that “our overall assessment is that the economic cost to the United States in aggregate and to typical households of attaining the targets and timetables specified in the Kyoto Protocol, will be modest.”

The administration estimates that the cost of achieving the Kyoto targets will range from $7 to $12 billion per year in 2008 to 2012, assuming that the administration is successful in including the developing nations in an emissions trading scheme.

The administration also estimates that the price of emissions will range from $14 to 23 per ton of carbon equivalent. This will lead to an increase in household energy prices of between 3 and 5 percent, fuel oil prices of about 5 to 9 percent, natural gas prices of 3 to 5 percent, gasoline prices of 3 to 4 percent and electricity prices of 3 to 4 percent.

The administration is claiming that electricity deregulation will save electricity consumers about $20 billion per year, offsetting the cost of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The administration has not as of yet proposed an electricity restructuring bill. “It is becoming clear to me that the administration support for restructuring [is] a way to mask the costs of complying with this treaty,” responded Subcommittee Chairman Dan Schaefer (R-Colo). “I would like the benefits of restructuring to flow to the consumers.”

These price increases would raise the typical households yearly energy bill by between $70 and $110, according to the administrations numbers. Electricity restructuring, however, will save the average household about $90 per year.

The administration also argues that the protocol will not hurt the competitiveness of U.S. industry. Energy, according to Yellen, only constitutes 2.2 percent of the overall costs of U.S. industry. She also argues that there are already substantial energy price differences across countries and this has not cause U.S. firms to go over seas.

Finally, Yellen says that there will be no “significant aggregate employment effect” resulting from compliance with the protocol. Some jobs from energy intensive industries will be lost, but “a large number of jobs will be created in other sectors many of them high-tech jobs paying high wages.” She also claimed that, “The President is firmly committed to assisting any workers who are adversely affected during the transition to a climate-friendly economy.”

Can Federal R&D Do the Job?

President Clintons $6.3 billion plan to create technology to reduce greenhouse gas emissions has started a debate on the merits of federal research and development funding. Joseph Romm, deputy assistant secretary with the U.S. Energy Department argues that federal funding has led to improvements in energy conservation.

He points to better halogen lights and more-fuel-efficient cars as evidence. It is difficult though to “tease out what gains stem from government efforts, and what might have been done anyway.”

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), for example, reviewed its Green Lights Program at the behest of the General Accounting Office (GAO). The GAO found that the voluntary program (2,300 companies pledged to upgrade lighting for 90 percent of their floor space over 5 years) fell far short of its goal replacing only 34 percent of lighting.

More importantly, EPA failed to account for other factors that may account for the changes. Electric utilities, for example, were already offering financial incentives to customers who upgraded lighting when Green Lights was instituted. Also, one-quarter of the firms in the program were makers and sellers of lighting, those most likely to already use state-of-the-art lighting.

The Clinton administration wants to approval for an additional $277 million for the Partnership for a New Generation of Vehicles, a joint venture between the Department of Energy and the Big Three auto makers to develop a car that gets 80 miles per gallon. Many are skeptical that it will be successful given the prevalence of low, stable energy prices.

“In the 1970s, energy-efficiency improvements were almost all driven by higher prices,” said William OKeefe, executive vice president of the American Petroleum Institute. “People had incentives to substitute new technology for energy use,” he said. “Improvements have been slower in the 90s because the price of energy, particularly crude oil, has been very low” (Investors Business Daily, February 23, 1998).

The Administrations Negotiating Strategy; Kyoto Protocol Can be Fixed; Kyoto is Doomed to Fail

by William Yeatman on March 12, 1998

in Kyoto Negotiations, Politics

The Administrations Negotiating Strategy

On March 4, 1998, Undersecretary of State Stuart Eizenstat reassured the House Commerce Subcommittee that the U.S. was committed to getting “meaningful” developing country participation. Under questioning, however, Eizenstat admitted that the Clinton Administration will sign the Kyoto Protocol as it now stands even if developing countries do not agree to participate. When asked whether this takes away the U.S.s leverage to get developing country participation, Eizenstat replied that it will give negotiators greater leverage because it will show that the U.S. is serious about stopping global warming.

Kyoto Protocol Can be Fixed

Robert Stavins, professor of public policy and Chair of the Environment and Natural Resources Program at Harvards Kennedy School of Government, said at a briefing for Capitol Hill staff members that the Kyoto Protocol is flawed, but can become a good foundation for future greenhouse policies if it is fixed.

To fix the protocol it will be necessary, says Stavins, to include at least four developing countries: China, Brazil, India, and South Korea. Stavins argued that limiting the protocol to developed countries will cause energy intensive industries to relocate to developing countries, driving up future emission control costs for these countries.

Another remedy for the protocol is clearly defined and workable rules for an international emission trading system. Such a system, argues Stavins, will drastically cut abatement costs for the industrialized countries. He claims that the U.S. could cut its compliance costs by as much as 90 percent with the right system.

Stavins also recommends that rather than distribute emissions allowances free of charge to U.S. firms, the U.S. government should auction the allowances, using the proceeds to lower federal taxes on labor and investment (BNA Daily Environment Report, February 27, 1998).

Kyoto is Doomed to Fail

In an article in Foreign Affairs (March/April 1998), Richard N. Cooper of Harvard University argues that the Kyoto Protocol as it now stands is “bound to fail.” The Kyoto framework is a set of agreed-upon national objectives that allows each country to comply in its own way. This will be achieved through trading emission rights.

The problem, as Cooper sees it, is that it will be impossible to arrive at an agreed upon distribution of emission rights between rich and poor countries, precluding developing country participation which will be needed to stabilize greenhouse gas emissions.

There are three reasons, says Cooper, why collective action on climate change will be difficult. First, “Effective restraint must . . . involve all actual and prospective major emitters of greenhouse gases.” Second, “the rewards from restraints on greenhouse gases will come in the politically distant future, while the costs will be incurred in the political present.” Third, reducing greenhouse gas emissions “will involve changes in behavior by hundreds of millions if not billions of people, not merely the fiat of 180 or so governments.”

Other problems, of course, involve the high costs of compliance. If a family of four in the U.S. wishes to sustain its current level of emissions it could be required to pay $2,200, says Cooper. U.S. transfers to the rest of the world could be as high as $130 billion a year.

What then does Cooper recommend? “[M]ost of the reduction in the rich countries must come at or near the points of final demand, where the number of consumers is greatest,” says Cooper. “The reductions must be achieved by some combination of taxation, exhortation, publicity, and environmental education.”

Since it is necessary for governments to change the behavior of its citizens it may be far easier for the parties of the Framework Convention on Climate Change to agree to a common use of emission reduction instruments rather than to a national allocation of emission rights. The instrument that Cooper favors is a carbon emission tax.

Monitoring such a tax could fall under the authority of the International Monetary Fund, since all “important” countries, with the exception of Cuba and North Korea, “hold annual consultations with the IMF on their macroeconomic policies, including the overall level and composition of their tax revenues.”

The IMF would report to a monitoring agent of the treaty and these reports “could be supplemented by international inspection of major taxpayers such as electric utilities, and the tax agencies of participating countries.

Finally, Cooper points out that carbon taxes would yield $750 billion worldwide, some of which should go to the United Nations to pay for refugee programs, peacekeeping and other UN programs.

Leading Climate Change Myths; Clouds and Climate Change; Ancient Climate Change

by William Yeatman on March 12, 1998

in Science

Leading Climate Change Myths

John Christy, as a key contributor to the 1995 IPCC report, “participated with the lead authors in the first and the final drafting sessions, and in the detailed review of the scientific text.” He writes in the Montgomery Advertiser (February 22, 1998) that much of what passes for common knowledge in the press regarding climate change is either “inaccurate, incomplete or viewed out of context.”

Many of the misconceptions about climate change, Christy contends, originate from the six-page executive summary, the “Summary for Policymakers (SP).” It is the most widely read and quoted of the three documents published by the IPCCs Working Group I, but had the “least input from scientists and the greatest input from non-scientists.”

The “true believers,” as Christy calls them, rests their entire case on one sentence from the SP; “The balance of evidence suggests a discernable human influence on global climate.” Christy is quick to point out that “2,500 IPCC scientists did not write, sign or otherwise endorse the Summary for Policymakers” nor the one sentence statement.

Other statements in the SP are equally disturbing. It states, “. . . the 20th Century global mean temperature is at least as warm as any other century since at least 1400 A.D.” This statement, argues Christy, is not meaningful. The temperature of the Earths atmosphere has warmed in the last 150 years but the Earths atmosphere is cooler now than it was 1,000, 5,000, or 10 million years ago. Warming over the last 150 years occurred because the planet has been emerging from the Little Ice Age, which lasted from 1400 to 1850.

Christy says that the line was lifted, out of context, from the scientific text to make it look like the global warming of the last century is due to human factors while ignoring the fact that the warm weather 1,000 years ago could not have been manmade.

So what does the report really say? Essentially this: we know that climate has always changed naturally. But, “We cant actually measure human impact on the climate, however, because we dont know enough about how or why the climate changes naturally.”

Sun, Sun, Sun, Sun, Sunshiny Day

A new study published by Switzerlands Federal Institute of Technology corroborates recent studies that find that variations in the suns brightness contributes significantly to climate change. The institute pointed out in a statement that “Very small variations in the suns brightness are sufficient to cause noticeable changes in climate.”

The study reconstructed the suns brightness since 1874 and adjusted the measurements to take account of the 11-year sunspot cycle. The Swiss astronomers, Sami Solanki and Marcel Fligge, who did the study also found that the earth has warmed up faster in the last 20 years than would be expected from such variations which they attribute to “other sources” (AAP Newsfeed, February 23, 1998).

Clouds and Climate Change

One of the unresolved issues in climate change research is how aerosols affect the nucleation (a process which concentrates the available water in a small number of large ice crystals) off different types of clouds. Aerosol particles act as “cloud condensation nuclei” which increase the reflectivity of cloud-tops.

According to Nature (February 26, 1998), “cirrus clouds ice-particle clouds that lie between a few thousand meters up and the tropopause, at 10 to 20 km exert an overall heating effect, because their reflectivity at solar wavelengths is low, and they absorb more rising infrared radiation than they emit to space from their very cold cloud tops.”

Recent studies have suggested that cirrus clouds can evolve from jet contrails, which consist of soot and sulphuric acid particles. Because of the altitude of aircraft emissions the affect can be comparable to natural and athropogenic sources.

One of the implications of these findings is that if jet contrails are indeed partially responsible for warming then this must be taken into account when determining the temperature affects of CO2 emissions. “How changes,” concludes Nature, “in tropospheric aerosol concentration, including aircraft emissions, will affect all types of cloud is a vital question in assessing the overall climatic impact of anthropogenic emissions,” Nature concludes.

Ancient Climate Change

Climate scientists have searched into the far past, using ice core and deep ocean setiment samples, to compile climate records that contain clues about climate change. Until now, however, records of interglacial periods (as we are experiencing now) were scarce.

Now researchers have now been able to complete a detailed record that extends nearly 2 million years into the past. The results and analysis of this record is reported in a recent article in Science (February 27, 1998).

The record shows that temperature variations are far greater during glacial periods (ice ages) than during interglacial periods. North Atlantic sea temperatures, for example, varied by as much as 3 to 4.5 degrees C during glacial periods 450,000 and 350,000 years ago, while they only varied by about 0.5 to 1 degree C during the interglacial period which fell in between.

Another finding is that “the record shows that climate varies on regular cycles lasting form 1,200 to 6,000 years, in glacial and interglacial periods alike.” “Whatever the cause of the climatic gyrations,” says Science, “the records suggest that the worst climate swing likely in the present interglacial is another Little Ice Age.”

The article concludes, “a push toward warmth during an already-warm interglacial might boost climate shifts to devastating proportions. Then again, because past climate swings have been smaller in warm periods, continued global warming might dampen them even further.”

The Kyoto Treaty Implications on National Defense

by William Yeatman on March 8, 1998

in Kyoto Negotiations, Politics, Science

The Center for Security Policy has done extensive research on the issue of global warming and national defense.

You may choose to browse or search their site, or read the following article which directly discusses the Kyoto Treaty and National Defense.

How Much Do You Cost?; Eco-Taxes Will Not Create Jobs; Drunk on Ethanol

by William Yeatman on February 28, 1998

in Blog

How Much Do You Cost?

William D. Nordhaus, economics professor at Yale University, and Joseph Boyer, a graduate student at Yale, have constructed an economic model of population growth to determine the economic cost that each person imposes on society in terms of environmental impact. The cost of each person in high-income countries is estimated at $100,000 while the costs of each person in low-income countries is $2,500.

Nordhaus, who delivered the paper at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science on February 15, said, “We calculate three ways an extra person affects the economy he or she consumes natural resources, requires a share of capital resources such as buildings and computers, and generates carbon emissions that contribute to global warming. These are societal costs beyond what a parent pays to raise a child.”

The Yale model is the first to include global warming in estimating the costs of population growth. The researchers found that climate change costs are relatively small with only 1 to 4 percent of total costs being those that transcend national boundaries. Nordhaus warns, however, that, “Before the model is used to influence policy or to make value judgements . . . more research needs to be done on ways to estimate these costs” (M2 Presswire, February 16, 1998).

Eco-Taxes Will Not Create Jobs

Britains Treasury has countered claims that eco-taxes will create jobs. Treasury minister, Dawn Primarolo, told the Environmental Audit Committee, a parliamentary watchdog set up by the Labour party, that she is skeptical about the “double dividend” that eco-tax proponents are promising.

The Institute for Public Policy Research, a think tank with close ties to Labour, has argued that shifting taxes away from employment to pollution will help both the environment and employment (Financial Times (London), February 11, 1998).

Drunk on Ethanol

Dan Glickman, Secretary of Agriculture, has announced that the United States Department of Agriculture “will contribute $10 million to an interagency Climate Change Technology Initiative, recognizing that agriculture can offer significant global warming solutions through cleaner-burning ethanol fuels, biomass projects that produce electricity by burning crops, and carbon sequestration, the use of plants to reduce the carbon blanket in our atmosphere thats heating up our earth and threatening world agriculture” (PR Newswire, February 11, 1998).

This appears to be another attempt by the administration to bribe yet another industry into supporting the Kyoto Protocol.

Labor and Management On The Same Side

Contract negotiations between the United Mine Workers and the Bituminous Coal Operators Association were finished early this year so the two groups could concentrate on fighting the Kyoto Protocol. “It was clearly in our mutual interest to reach agreement on the national contract so that we could focus on working together to protect the long-term viability of the industry,” said B.R. Brown, the chief BCOA negotiator.

UMW President Cecil Roberts said, “In my opinion, the Administration sold every American worker down the river, and its time for our union and the industry to begin looking at supporting candidates who will stand up not only for coal miners, but for every worker in this country” (The Sunday Gazette Mail, February 8, 1998).

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