BIOFUELS firms are demanding the British government and the European Union take action to stop American rivals exploiting subsidies to flood the European markets with cut-price fuel.
2007
Soaring food prices, driven in part by demand for ethanol made from corn, have helped slash the amount of food aid the government buys to its lowest level in a decade, possibly resulting in more hungry people around the world this year.
Most crops grown in the United States and Europe to make "green" transport fuels actually speed up global warming because of industrial farming methods, says a report by Nobel prize winning chemist Paul J. Crutzen.
Members of the International Civil Aviation Organization rejected EU proposals Friday to cut carbon emissions made by the aviation industry, the European Commission said.
President George W. Bush went on the offensive on climate change Friday, proposing a summit next year among major emitters of greenhouse gases that would set a long-term global goal for curbing this dangerous pollution.
Energy security and climate change are two of the great challenges of our time. The United States takes these challenges seriously. The world's response will help shape the future of the global economy and the condition of our environment for future generations. The nations in this room have special responsibilities. We represent the world's major economies, we are major users of energy, and we have the resources and knowledge base to develop clean energy technologies.
Just back from the President’s speech discussing the ongoing, two-day Major Economies Meeting on Energy Security and Climate Change. My impressions are as follow:
I've long maintained that the administration’s greatest weakness on this issue – that is, after the habit of providing futile rhetorical overtures to appease the greens which are only used against them in ways never intended, but quite obviously invited – is the failure to tout U.S. emissions performance and/or burst our antagonists’ bubble about their purported superiority simply because they made a promise (that, someone official needs to note, they are spectacularly breaking while we reduce emissions growth to near zero). True to form, the President did not discuss comparative emissions other than to say unnamed countries have done similar things.
“Last year, the United States grew our economy, while reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Several other nations have made similar strides.”
Names please! Among the major economies? While the latter may be true I’ve not heard it before (though I don't keep close tabs on, say, Japan's emissions) and I fear it is another sop to the obvious constituency within his team (coughStateDepartmentcough) who insist that he not respond to Europe’s hypocritical attacks on him and U.S. performance, but instead keep trying to love bomb them.
This was followed by, “By setting this goal, we acknowledge there is a problem.”
Headline writers and pressure group lawyers demanding that EPA publish an “endangerment” finding under the Clean Air Act, phone your office!
Other than that, not too much was rhetorically given away, but for the hope-against-experience claim that “Wind power is becoming cost effective in many parts of America”, and that one day it could provide up to 20% of America's energy (sp? Even if he did say or meant electricity, this requires the willing suspension of disbelief).
Now, about the administration’s proposal that the major emitting economies get together to see what is it that they can agree on and go from there, the President confirmed that it will proceed under the UNFCCC (which Kyoto amended, a post-2012 successor to which is now being vainly sought), these fairly (by now) minor missteps and curiosities aside, this inescapably proposes a competing scenario to continuing Kyoto's approach after it expires, that is, the second of a two-track approach to "post-2012".
Bush summed it up with a soft pushback to his adversaries including in the media:
“What I'm telling you is we’ve got a strategy. And we've got a comprehensive approach”.
The bottom line of the plan is that each state promises to do what it wants. Which, of course, obviates any practical imperative for an international agreement, although it satisfied a political need.
The administration takes pains to argue that this is not an alternative to Kyoto, the threat of which sends the greens through the roof because heaven knows the thing wouldn't survive competition. And they have co-opted the UNFCCC’s head, Yvo de Boer into supporting it. Yet it is worth noting that such a Plan B is by no means inherently mutually exclusive with Kyoto. In fact, if Europe is so wedded to the rationing approach, they are fully able to continue going that route alone while others pursue the Bush approach. In all likelihood, the Kyoto approach will fall by the wayside as “do your own thing, baby” advances.
The problem remains, but continues to be compounded, of the rhetorical sops they promiscuously toss out in the vain hope that it will do anything but serve as fodder for a clever, lavishly funded, litigious anti-energy anti-growth anti-sovereignty industry riding this issue to their policy objectives.
So the good news is that the world, developed and developing, will thank Bush for having taken the fall allowing Kyoto to die. The bad news is that the lawyers of the U.S. will thank him for how he did it.
After the terror attacks of September 11, 2001, environmental groups saw an opening. They realized that national-security hawks would be open to proposals to replace Middle Eastern oil, which they believed was financing terrorism, with alternative energy sources. Overtures were made. Then, slowly but surely, “bipartisan” coalitions began to produce reports aimed at killing two birds with one stone — the flow of dollars to terrorists and the risks of global warming. The proposals may sound compelling, but they will do nothing to strengthen America, and would weaken it instead.
There are reports from reliable sources that the Environmental Protection Agency is moving rapidly to propose new rules to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from new automotive vehicles. This is being done in order to comply with the Supreme Court’s decision on April 2 in Massachusetts v. EPA. That 5 to 4 opinion ruled that greenhouse gas emissions fall within the Clean Air Act’s definition of air pollutants and that the EPA therefore had to consider a 1999 petition to regulate them.
Two sources have told me that EPA will decide before January 1 that greenhouse gas emissions endanger public health and welfare. Such a finding of endangerment under the Clean Air Act triggers regulatory action.
What might the EPA propose to do? Again, the reports I’ve heard mention two proposals: first, higher Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFÉ) standards for new passenger cars and light trucks; and second, implementation by administrative action of President Bush’s “20 in 10” proposal that twenty per cent of America’s vehicle fuel consumption be provided from renewable sources (such as ethanol) within ten years.
The Bush Administration is already moving to raise CAFÉ standards. As part of its anti-energy bill, the Senate this summer passed higher CAFÉ standards and a version of the President’s renewable fuel mandate. Thus EPA would be implementing two big chunks of the Congress’s anti-energy agenda without legislation.
Whatever EPA proposes will be offered as a proposed rulemaking, which will then have to go through all the procedural hoops before it becomes final. That could take a year or two. Then we can expect several years of litigation by industry and environmental pressure groups. This will not stop Congress from passing legislation in this area, nor will it stop the next President from proposing a different set of regulatory remedies. EPA’s next step will almost certainly be to consider how best to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from power plants and other stationary sources.
Global warming is a complex issue to figure out, but one thing about it is actually quite simple — discerning which side dominates the debate right now. For the past year, those who view global warming as a crisis justifying a major federal response have had just about everything going in their favor.
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