GlobalWarming.org

Talks on global warming in the United States next week may be complicated by differences among developing countries as their climate policy positions diverge.

The significant problems that might be caused by global warming are indisputable; all the major figures in climate economics agree. Yet they also, with the exception of Sir Nicholas, agree that drastic action now would be even more costly.

The chairman of the U.S. Congressional Oversight and Government Reform Committee on Wednesday sent a letter to the Environmental Protection Agency administrator saying the EPA erred in approving a new coal-fired power plant in Utah three weeks ago.

Two environmental groups are suing the federal government, contending that the Conservatives failed to comply with legislation meant to force their hand to meet Kyoto Protocol targets.

Climate change may lead to lush growth rather than catastrophic tree loss in the Amazonian forests, researchers from the US and Brazil have found.

On Wednesday, September 12, Judge Vermont US District Court Judge William Sessions upheld a Vermont law requiring automakers to cut climate-warming vehicle emissions 30 percent by 2016. Fortunately for autoworkers concerned about losing their jobs, the omniscient judge declared that job losses “would be small (pg 89, ruling).” I bet that was comforting.

 That’s the bad news. The good news is that a federal judge in San Francisco ruled on September 17 that auto companies cannot be held liable for future damages in California caused by global warming.  In a decision atypical of the activism that characterizes our courts today, Judge Martin Jenkins dismissed California’s claims against the automakers because, “policy decisions concerning the authority and standards for carbon dioxide emissions lie with the political branches of government, and not with the courts."

 Given the current composition of Congress, who knows what deferring to the political process on global warming will lead to. Judge Jenkins nonetheless deserves plaudits for having the courage to make such an unpopular ruling.

The Bush Administration is hosting a meeting of Major Emitter Nations in Washington on September 27-8.  The oft-stated claim is that this meeting is not meant to compete with the upcoming negotiations for a second round of Kyoto reductions at the annual UN meeting in December, which this year is being held in Bali.  Instead, the major emitters meeting is supposed to contribute to the Kyoto process. 

That’s the official Bush Administration position, but it looks more and more like the major emitters meeting, together with the Asia Pacific Partnership, is a plausible replacement for the Kyoto Protocol when it expires at the end of 2012.  

Kyoto calls for industrialized nations to cut greenhouse gas emissions 6% below 1990 levels by 2008 to 2012.  From the start in 1997, however, Kyoto has been a mess. China, now the world’s #1 emitter, and other rapidly developing nations, such as Brazil and India, ratified Kyoto but did not undertake any commitments to reduce emissions.

Although Kyoto’s targets are supposed to be binding, the European Union, Canada, and Japan are not meeting them.  Emissions are rising and in some countries rising rapidly.  The EU’s performance since 1997 lags that of the U. S.  It’s not clear how a second round can be negotiated under these circumstances.  In this context, the major emitters meeting looks like an alternative path.

A hint of where that path may lead was given by the recent APEC summit in Sydney, where it was agreed that there should be long-term “aspirational” emissions targets.  The purpose of the Washington meeting is reportedly to set this voluntary long-term goal, plus adopt intermediate goals and then create a number of teams to work on specific issues.

The European Union will oppose this approach and try to keep Kyoto going, but it appears that Japan and Canada have already jumped off the Kyoto bandwagon.  China and some of the other big developing nations appear to have a foot in each camp.  On the one hand, China and India support a second Kyoto round if it will result in continuing and increased transfers of wealth from industrialized nations to them.  On the other hand, they remained adamant in refusing to undertake mandatory emissions reductions themselves and have welcomed the idea of aspirational targets.

It may be that Kyoto and Kyoto’s replacement can both limp along for a few years, but at some point it seems almost inescapable that China, India, Brazil, and the other rising economies will have to choose one or the other.  As long as no country can demonstrate that it can cut its emissions without damaging its economy, it seems likely that Kyoto will continue to wither and the major emitters process will become the only game around.  

Even though the House and Senate anti-energy bills and the various cap-and-trade bills to ration energy are stalled for the moment, the campaign against affordable energy continues in Washington. As reported by Reuters, Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), Chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, has written a letter to the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, Stephen Johnson, claiming that the EPA's recent licensing of construction of a coal-fired power plant in Utah is illegal.

Waxman's letter argues that the Supreme Court's decision in Massachusetts v. EPA defines carbon dioxide as a pollutant and therefore EPA is legally obliged to regulate it. I don't doubt that EPA may eventually decide to regulate CO2 emissions, but Waxman is jumping the gun. EPA is in the process of deciding whether and how to regulate CO2 from autos and trucks, as the Supreme Court ordered it to do. Power plants may indeed be included in that decision. In the meantime, EPA has no regulations in place to regulate carbon dioxide emissions. To deny a permit for a new power plant today on the grounds that greenhouse gases may be regulated in the future would be an audacious as well as most peculiar expansion of regulatory authority.

Waxman is trying to add another weapon to the burgeoning campaign against coal by environmental pressure groups. The fact is that the growing demand for electricity in America cannot possibly be met in the next few years without building scores, perhaps even hundreds, of new coal-fired plants. If Waxman and his allies are successful, the result will be to export California's electricity shortages, blackouts, and high prices to the rest of the country. Misery really does love company.

Backed by the White House, corn-state governors and solid blocks on both sides of Congress’s partisan divide, the politics of biofuels could hardly look sunnier. The economics of the American drive to increase ethanol in the energy supply are more discouraging.