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White House Rejects Mandatory CO2 Caps
By John Heilprin
The Associated Press
Friday 02 February 2007
Washington - Despite a strongly worded global warming report from the
world's top climate scientists, the Bush administration expressed
continued opposition Friday to mandatory reductions in heat-trapping
"greenhouse" gases.
Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman warned against "unintended
consequences" - including job losses - that he said might result if
the government requires economy-wide caps on carbon dioxide from the
burning of fossil fuels.
"There is a concern within this administration, which I support, that
the imposition of a carbon cap in this country would - may - lead to
the transfer of jobs and industry abroad (to nations) that do not
have such a carbon cap," Bodman said. "You would then have the U.S.
economy damaged, on the one hand, and the same emissions, potentially
even worse emissions."
President Bush used the same economic reasoning when he rejected the
Kyoto Protocol in 2001, an international treaty requiring 35
industrial nations to cut their global-warming gases by 5 percent on
average below 1990 levels by 2012. The White House has said the
treaty would have cost 5 million U.S. jobs.
"Even if we were successful in accomplishing some kind of debate and
discussion about what caps might be here in the United States, we are
a small contributor to the overall, when you look at the rest of the
world. And so it's really got to be a global solution," Bodman said.
The United States each year contributes about a quarter of the
world's greenhouse gases, though the share from China, India and
other developing countries also is growing.
Bodman said he would make the same argument against carbon caps even
if the U.S. share were larger. He and other administration officials
at a news conference praised the report Friday by a United Nations-sponsored panel of hundreds of climate scientists from 113
governments, who said there is little doubt the earth is warming as a
result of man-made emissions.
But Bodman said technology advancements that will cut the amount of
carbon emissions, promote energy conservation, and hasten development
of non-fossil fuels can address the problem.
"This administration's aggressive, yet practical strategy to reduce
greenhouse gas emissions is delivering real results," added Stephen
Johnson, administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency.
More than a half-dozen bills have been introduced, mostly by
Democrats, calling for some form of mandatory carbon controls in the
United States. Democrats newly in control of Congress and other
critics of Bush's environmental policies pounced on the long-awaited
U.N. report like fresh meat.
"This puts the final nail in denial's coffin," said Sen. Joseph
Lieberman, I-Conn., head of the Senate Homeland Security and
Governmental Affairs Committee.
Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass., a senior member of House panels on
energy and natural resources, said he hoped it wouldn't take until
Groundhog Day two years from now, when a new president is in the
White House, to alter course in the United States.
"It sounds like the Bush administration, having seen the very real
shadow of scientific evidence of global warming, has chosen to go
back into its hole of denial by saying that it will not support
measures to reduce global warming and its disastrous affects on our
economy and environment," Markey said.
The White House issued a statement less than four hours after the
report's release defending Bush's six-year record on global climate
change, beginning with his acknowledgment in 2001 that the increase
in greenhouse gases is due largely to human activity.
It said Bush and his budget proposals have devoted $29 billion to
climate-related science, technology, international assistance and
incentive programs - "more money than any other country."
Bush has called for slowing the growth rate of U.S. greenhouse gas
emissions, which averages 1 percent a year, but has rejected
government-ordered reductions. Last week he also called for a 20
percent reduction in U.S. gasoline consumption over the next 10 years.
"This report really provides strong weight behind those saying we
need much stronger action" from the United States and other nations,
said Robert Watson, the World Bank's chief spokesman on global
warming and former chairman of the U.N. scientific panel responsible
for evaluating the threat of climate change.
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