The news that Sir Nicholas Stern will be coming to the US to promote the recommendations of his global warming study was welcomed by environmentalists yesterday, but there was widespread scepticism that it would contribute to a change of policy while George Bush is in office.
The White House issued a non-committal statement welcoming the Stern review as a contribution to the body of knowledge on climate change, but did not address its calls for a change in policy. "The president has long recognised that climate change is a serious issue. He has committed the nation to investing in new technologies," it said.
After initially expressing doubts, the Bush administration now accepts that industrial emissions are contributing to climate change, but it remains opposed to mandatory caps on greenhouse gas emissions and the sort of carbon-trading scheme outlined in the Stern report. The White House argues that such measures would impose crippling costs on the US economy, in return for uncertain gains.
"What I see so far today does not give me any reason to believe that Mr Stern can be a spokesman who can change minds and open ears here," said Samuel Thernstrom, a former communications director for the Council on Environmental Quality in the Bush White House, now at the American Enterprise Institute.
"I don't see a whole lot new here. They're hanging a lot on what they call 'robust economic analysis', but there's a lot of uncertainty here that they don't acknowledge." He said choosing Al Gore, who lost the US presidential race to George Bush six years ago in one of the closest and most bitter elections in US history, as a special adviser on climate change would lessen the report's impact in Washington.
"Sending Al Gore to talk to George Bush about this is the most ineffective choice you could make. It's like sending Bill Clinton out as a spokesman for sexual abstinence," he said.
But Eileen Claussen, the president of the Pew Centre on Global Climate Change, a Washington think tank and pressure group, argued that the Stern report would have an impact in the US.
"We are at the beginning of a serious debate about what to do about climate change and I think this report will improve the quality of the debate," she said.
"Much of the opposition will be over the costs, and Stern has been able to talk to the costs of inaction." But she did not expect any significant change of policy in Washington until 2010, a year after Mr Bush's successor takes office. Ms Claussen said that there was a possibility of a change of course earlier, driven by Congress.
Even if Republicans retained their hold on November 7th, growing alarm about climate change in the president's party might prompt bipartisan measures on greenhouse gases.
So, although the report was unlikely to have any immediate impact, it could sow the seeds of future environmental policy. - (Guardian service)