THE US: President Bush yesterday elaborated in detail for the first time his voluntary domestic alternative to the Kyoto treaty's mandatory curbs on the key greenhouse gas, CO2. Patrick Smyth, Washington Correspondent reports
The programme involves voluntary emission curbs, backed by $4.6 million in tax incentives to industry to invest in alternative sources of energy such as wind and biomass, farmers to plant carbon dioxide-absorbing trees, and for consumers to buy solar panels and fuel-efficient cars.
The plan will also provide incentives to business to register their emissions - today only 222 firms do so.
Mr Bush said the government in 2012 would re-evaluate its success in cutting greenhouse gases and consider a new, possibly tougher system.
But critics were quick to point out that unlike Kyoto, which requires cuts in emission levels by 40 industrialised countries to levels 5 per cent below 1990 levels, Mr Bush's plan would only slow and not halt increases in the gases which are linked to global warming.
Mr Bush, in a speech at the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, replaces the idea of cuts by proposing "emission intensity" targets providing that for every increase in GDP, business and utilities are encouraged to set a target of a smaller increase in emissions. Such an approach would minimise the effect of curbs on growth, the Administration argues.
"Today, I announce a new environmental path for America which will benefit the entire world," Mr Bush said. "This new approach is based on the common-sense idea that sustainable economic growth is the key to environmental progress because it is growth that provides the resources for investment in clean technologies."
According to the White House, the approach would cut greenhouse gas emissions from an estimated 183 metric tons per million dollars of gross domestic product in 2002 to 151 metric tons per million dollars of GDP by 2012, an 18 per cent reduction in "greenhouse gas intensity". But, nevertheless, a substantial real increase in emissions.
"They are trying to set up mechanisms to allow indefinite increases in emissions," Ms Jennifer L. Morgan, a climate change expert with the World Wildlife Fund, told the Washington Post. "If you want to get at the President's long-term emissions stabilisation goals, this won't do it."
Mr Bush's announcement has been timed ahead of his trip to Asia in a bid to soften allies' criticism of his repudiation last year of the Kyoto Treaty.
Although he had campaigned in the elections on a programme that included a pledge to reduce emissions, Mr Bush came under heavy pressure from coal and oil interests among his backers and made a U-turn that completely wrongfooted his secretary to the Environment Protection Agency, Ms Christine Todd-Whitman.
The President, however, also announced an EPA plan to force utilities and manufacturers to limit future emissions of three other non-carbon pollutants - sulphur dioxide, nitrogen oxide and mercury - that produce smog and haze and pose major health problems for infants, older children and sufferers from respiratory diseases. But only by 2010, a lot later than environmentalists had hoped.
Under the "cap and trade" approach, the government would set mandatory limits on emissions of those three pollutants while establishing a new market in which major polluters can purchase "credits" from non-polluting companies toward meeting their pollution targets.
Mr Bush's move comes only two weeks after California, the world's largest car market, specifically rejected the voluntarist road and backed the first mandatory standards on car emissions. The bill, strongly opposed by the car industry, was agreed by the state Assembly and now goes to the Senate, where it is expected to pass easily. It requires the California Air Resources Board to write the regulations by January 2004 and put them into effect by January 2005.
The car industry argued that while catalytic converters can reduce pollution from cars and trucks, the only way to reduce emission of carbon dioxide is to drive less. "There is no device you can add to a vehicle to reduce carbon dioxide," said Ms Gloria J. Bergquist, a spokeswoman for the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, which includes the three biggest companies and Toyota.
Environmentalists argue that improvements can be made with more efficient tyres and fuels and by encouraging public transportation.
"There are a lot of ways the car companies could meet this obligation without addressing the actual fuel economy under the hood," said Ms Julia Levin, the California policy co-ordinator for the Union of Concerned Scientists.