Cold shoulder to warming ideas

By Jonathan Adler Copyright 1999 Washington Times March 19, 1999

Vice President Al Gore spent much of 1998 auditioning for the job of national weatherman. But this month, as unanticipated snowstorms blanketed the Capitol, he preferred to talk about the traffic. Apparently he or his advisers thought better of trying to explain why March snowstorms were signs of global warming.

In the wake of 1998's almost monthly press conferences and White House announcements on global warming, the vice president's recent silence is deafening. Indeed, Mr. Gore had little to say about the introduction of a bipartisan Senate bill designed to facilitate ratification of the Kyoto Protocol, the United Nations global-warming treaty.

Washington's recent cold spell was hardly the only reason for the vice president to remain mute on climate issues. For while Mr. Gore claims scientific debate is over, and that the consensus of climate scientists holds that failure to drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions threatens a global environmental holocaust, scientific research continues to suggest otherwise.

Indeed, just as the weather stubbornly fails to conform with Mr. Gore's greenhouse projections, a raft of recent scientific findings undermines the case for a global climate treaty.

Notably, a paper published in the March 12 Science that in prehistoric times increases in the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide followed, rather than preceded, the planet's warming. Perhaps not coincidentally, most of the past century's warming occurred prior to World War II, before the increase in carbon dioxide emissions and atmospheric levels. Other recent findings indicate emissions of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, will not increase as originally forecast, and that the solar cycles have far greater impact on climate changes than previously estimated.

Also in the past few months, the National Research Council published two reports that sharply undermine the vice president's claims about present climate trends and future projections. According to one of the reports, "current observational capabilities and practice are inadequate to characterize many of the changes in global and regional climate." No quick fix is possible, according to the NRC, as "significant progress in . . . characterizing and predicting seasonal-to-century time-scale variability in climate, including the role of human activities in forcing variability, is likely to take a decade or more." Similarly, atmospheric scientist James Hansen, who confidently proclaimed in 1988 that human-induced warming was already upon us, now acknowledges that "the forcings that drive long-term climate change are not known with an accuracy sufficient to define future climate change."

In the face of these and other recent findings, it is increasingly difficult for the vice president and others to call for ratification of the Kyoto Protocol, which calls for the slashing of emissions 30 percent below projections within the next 10 to 15 years. Meeting these targets would entail severe restrictions on energy use, as most U.S. energy is derived from fossil fuels, and alternative energy sources, such as wind and solar, are only economical in niche markets.

Some advocates of emission reductions acknowledge that the science behind warming forecasts is less than solid, but maintain that precautionary measures are required nonetheless "just in case" the vice president's apocalyptic premonitions come to pass. Under this approach, the Kyoto Protocol is "insurance" against the worst-case scenario. The problem is that the emission cuts contemplated under the Kyoto treaty are large enough to impose substantial costs, but too small to have an appreciable impact on the climate. In other words, if Mr. Gore is right, the Kyoto Protocol does not accomplish a thing.

A more sensible "insurance" policy would include measures that serve to encourage environmental innovation, increase efficiency in energy markets, and otherwise enhance society's capacity to adapt to an uncertain future. Rather than bribe corporate America to submit to an international treaty, Congress instead should eliminate fossil fuel energy subsidies that create market distortions, remove regulatory barriers to the adoption of advanced technologies that improve efficiency and reduce emissions, and open up electricity markets by eliminating utility franchises. Such a "no regrets" strategy - so-called because such measures make sense in their own right - will produce substantial economic and environmental benefits whether or not global warming is threat.

This approach does not require the promulgation of new regulations or funding for new programs. Rather it calls for eliminating those government programs and restrictions that inhibit innovation. For instance, Clean Air Act permitting rules, which can impose substantial delays and extensive paperwork requirements on new facilities, discourage the replacement of older, dirtier facilities with newer, cleaner ones.

As a recent Environmental Law Institute study found, permitting rules "discourage innovation by making the approval process for new technologies lengthier, more cumbersome, and less certain than for conventional approaches." Yet the EPA has devoted greater resources to developing new climate-related initiatives than addressing this and other related concerns.

Embracing "no regrets" measures should be a no-brainer. But this approachhas failed to garner support within the environmental community, perhaps because it does not entail limiting the use of fossil fuels or expanding government intervention in the economy. After all, eliminating subsidies and deregulating markets is a far cry from the energy taxation agenda embraced by the Clinton-Gore administration in their first term. Nonetheless, it is the wisest policy response given the scientific uncertainty about what climate changes may come to pass.

Computer modelers, let alone policy-makers, will never be able to predict the environmental future with much precision. Thus, the "safest" course is one that encourages innovation and enhances society's ability to respond to whatever changes and disruptions the future may bring. If Al Gore really wants to be the national weatherman, he should help Americans prepare for the future, rather than try and control it.

Jonathan H. Adler is senior director of environmental policy at the Competitive Enterprise Institute and the editor of "TheCosts of Kyoto: Climate Change Policy and Its Implications" (1997).

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