The U.S. Congress returned to Washington this week, following its July 4 holiday recess, only to face yet another media dog-and-pony show
staged by Vice President Albert Gore and his small cadre of government scientists. The press conference is underway even as we write this the
Administration's fourth global-warming press event in five weeks, but neither CNN nor C-SPAN nor any other local television channel is
covering it live. Perhaps the broadcast media has decided that Mr. Gore's press conferences are becoming too boringly predictable. In any case,
we won't have the details until the next TW2.
We certainly sympathize with Mr. Gore, who hasn't had as easy a time promoting
the Kyoto Protocol as he would have liked. To begin with, the 150 country
delegations to the U.N. conference on global warming , which met last month in
Bonn, Germany, (the latest of many such meeting and, yes, taxpayers are
footing the bill), failed to resolve major disagreements over plans to limit
greenhouse gas emissions. Apparently, the delegates agreed to a worldwide treaty in
Kyoto, but now that their governments have had a look at this bureaucratic
nightmare, the politicians are having second thoughts. The two-week meeting
ended in chaos.
Worse, from Mr. Gore's point of view, members of the U.S. Congress, Republicans
and some Democrats, are threatening to close a large part of his taxpayer-funded
global warming candy store and moving to block the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's attempts to backdoor the Kyoto Protocol, i.e.,
implement it without Senate ratification. Shortly before Congress adjourned for the
holiday, the House dumped nearly $200 million earmarked for solar/wind power
research and energy efficiency, and signaled that it had no interest in the
Administration's $6.3 billion, five-year climate initiative.
Most worrisome to Mr. Gore is language in the House bill specifically
prohibiting the EPA and the Council on Environmental Quality--headed by Katie
McGinty, Al Gore's former chief of staff--from engaging in taxpayer-funded
lobbying on the global warming issue; in short, no planning sessions, no
carefully orchestrated public forums, no nothing until or unless the Protocol
is ratified by the Senate. (Watch for Mr. Gore to interpret this as a gag
rule. ) Todd Stern, White House coordinator on global warming, quoted by
Associated Press (July 7, 1998), questioned whether last fall's White House
Conference on Climate Change could have been held under such restrictions. He
questioned whether the White House would have been able to invite, as it did,
more than 100 television weathercasters to Washington to discuss global
warming.
Stern and EPA spokeswoman Loretta Ucelli also denied up one side and down the
other any attempt to backdoor the Kyoto Protocol, saying that just because the
EPA's proposed programs limited greenhouse-gas emissions and create additional
subsidies for solar and wind power doesn't mean they are an attempt at
backdoor implementation. Neither, apparently, was an April 10, 1998 EPA memorandum,
claiming legal authority under the Clean Air Act to regulate CO2 emissions
as a hazardous pollutant. Much hypocrisy and hand-wringing going on here.
Well we don't need to remind the Congress that a major problem with Kyoto is
that it places binding emissions reductions on the United States and 31 other
developed countries, while exempting from any restrictions 132 developing
nations, including such giants as China, India, Brazil, and Mexico. We would
remind the Congress, however, that the White House Conference on Climate
Change was not a balanced presentation, included no scientist-critics of the
government's scientific claims, and gave prominence to a fringe activist
group, Ozone Action. In fact, Ozone Action representatives were allowed to present
the President and Vice President with a petition (signed largely by graduate
students, veterinarians, activist public relations types, etc.), which many in
the press mistakenly took for Gore's famous and completely fabricated
consensus of 2,500 IPCC scientists.
As for the 100 weathercasters, the Wall Street Journal reported at the time
that many expressed doubts about Administration's case for global warming;
others questioned why they were invited in the first place. A group of TV
weathercasters in Ohio not only declined the White House invitation but
expressed their frustration with the way the issue was being promoted by
staging a press conference in Cleveland to sign the Leipzig Declaration, a
strongly worded statement against global warming hype.
Members of Congress from both political parties, including a few high-ranking
Democrats in the Senate, are taking a hard look at the scientific evidence
for global warmingpossibly because the many protestations that the science is
settled have given Congressional members an uneasy feeling that it isn't.
More important, no doubt, they're hearing from their constituents. The 29
member states of the Interstate Oil and Gas Compact Commission, for example,
issued a resolution and press release on June 29, 1998, calling on President
Clinton and federal lawmakers to employ more cautious, inclusive policy
setting on the global warming issue. This is too important and potentially costly an
issue to be decided on a purely political basis or without solid scientific
footing, said Governor Ed Schafer of North Dakota, who drafted the
resolution. It's time for all viewpoints to be heard, and the states are
among the most affected stakeholders.
In Europe, the UK Environment Ministry let its commercial fishing industry off
the hook by announcing that the drop in the number of salmon entering
Britain's rivers was due to global warming. European farmers may not be so lucky.
Cattle are blamed for increases in methane. Some European governments are
considering imposing a value-added tax on fertilizers to discourage their
overuse. The possibility of a carbon tax is also being raisedagain. The
Dutch, Danes, and Finns want to make their individual commitments to limiting
greenhouse gases contingent upon all members of the European Union adopting
some sort of carbon/energy tax. Since it is highly unlikely that all 15 EU
member countries will agree to impose a carbon tax, which would likely mean
these threeparticularly the Dutch and the Finns--can forget the whole thing
and go on their merry way.
The Dutch position is particularly noteworthy. With much of the Netherlands
below sea level, the Dutch government has been whining about global warming;
even before Kyoto it pledged to reduce carbon emissions to 10 percent below
1990 levels. At the meeting of EU environment ministers in Luxembourg last
month, however, the Dutch environment minister doggedly stuck to a figure of
just 6 percent, reportedly at the insistence of the Dutch government, which
fears that any further concessions would slow economic growth.
To wrap up: during President Clinton's recent foray into China, the
Administration bragged about selling nuclear power plants to the Chinese. The
nuclear power industry has been advertising itself as a clean and safe source
of energy (which it is) and the answer to concerns about global warming. Some
of the Swedes are convinced. In Sweden, a citizens committee has now been
formed to save the Barseback nuclear power station, slated for phaseout by
the Green-dominated Swedish government. U.S. Vice President Albert Gore, however,
has already signaled that the Administration has no plans to encourage more
nuclear power plants here. The White House announced last week that when Gore
visits the Ukraine July 21-23, one of his stops will be Chernobyl. Brace
yourselves for another press briefing.
Until next week...
TW2 is compiled by SEPP Research Associate Candace Crandall. Be sure to visit
The Science & Environmental Policy Project web site (www.sepp.org) for new articles and information.
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