February 15, 2002
Bush Plan Expected to Slow, Not Halt, Gas Emission Rise
By ANDREW C. REVKIN
President Bush is set to announce a plan today calling for voluntary measures to slow but not halt the growth in emissions of heat-trapping gases linked to global warming, White House officials said last night.
The climate proposal is Mr. Bush's response to the Kyoto Protocol, the 1997 treaty accepted but not yet ratified by all other large industrialized countries, which would require cuts in such emissions by 2010 to well below their 1990 levels. Mr. Bush rejected the treaty last March, calling its targets arbitrary, its schedule too costly to meet and its terms, which are not easily applied in large developing countries, unfair.
The program he is to announce this afternoon would slow the rate of growth in emissions in relation to the growth of the overall economy. It would use $4.6 billion in tax credits over the next five years to encourage companies and individuals to limit those emissions.
Utilities, for example, would get incentives to build power-generating windmills; homeowners would get new tax credits for buying solar panels or more efficient cars.
The one thing the climate policy would not do is require anything of anybody, sticking with the position Mr. Bush has held for more than a year on the climate issue: that firm limits on the so-called greenhouse gases would drag down the economy.
The administration's approach, he plans to say, 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 an advance text.
On another emissions issue unrelated to climate, aides said Mr. Bush would call today for mandatory restrictions on three other kinds of pollutants from power plants: mercury, sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides. In contrast to proposals by environmentalists and many Democrats, however, the plan would delay such cuts until 2010 or later.
Last night, administration officials called the voluntary approach on climate the most reasonable path for the time being. A senior administration official did say, however, that if insufficient progress was being made by 2012, there could be a move toward some kind of limits. "If we're not making progress toward our goal," he said, "we will be considering a full range of programs."
Some environmental groups criticized this kind of checkup, saying it puts off any measuring of progress until well after Mr. Bush is out of office.
Under the administration's proposed target, the growth rate of emissions of carbon dioxide would drop nearly 18 percent by 2012 — to 151 metric tons for each $1 million in gross domestic product, from the current level of 183 metric tons.
But environmental groups sharply criticized this kind of yardstick, saying that it merely reflects an existing trend toward using energy more efficiently and adding that as long as the economy grows, this would not result in emissions reductions.
Alluding to the date of the speech, Jennifer Morgan, the climate policy director for the World Wildlife Fund, called it "a valentine to the coal and oil industry that will allow emissions to increase without any time frame, eternally."
One provision of the new climate plan would be to greatly expand a program encouraging businesses to monitor and report their emissions of greenhouse gases. Those that participate, voluntarily, would gain credits that might eventually be used in a trading scheme similar to that used for other pollution.
White House officials said this could prompt industries to change behavior, the same way similar reporting requirements instituted in the late 1980's resulted in big cuts in releases of toxic chemicals.
Philip E. Clapp, president of the National Environmental Trust, a private lobbying group, criticized this approach, saying: "The president's global warming proposal appears to be another faith-based initiative: we should have faith that major corporations will line up to volunteer cuts in their carbon pollution. That approach has failed for a decade now, since the president's father set up the first voluntary program."
And Myron Ebell, a climate policy expert at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a private group whose free- market views are frequently embraced by industry, criticized the idea from the opposite ideological direction.
"What looks like voluntary will actually be coercive," Mr. Ebell said.
The president is leaving for Asia on Saturday and has been under pressure to present a climate plan before visiting Japan. Japan, which has avoided criticizing the administration over its rejection of the treaty, has been eager for a sign that Mr. Bush is concerned about the issue. Several experts on the treaty said that his decision to make the announcement now was very likely influenced by this situation.
The proposed plan on nongreenhouse emissions from power plants — mercury, sulfur dioxide, and nitrogen oxides — would impose mandatory limits but would allow companies to exceed them by buying credits from others that reduce pollution below required levels.
There would be no similar limits on power plants' emissions of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas. In the face of lobbying from coal companies and utilities, Mr. Bush abandoned a campaign pledge last March to control the four plant emissions together and has shown no signs of reconsidering that idea.
As hints of the emerging plan circulated in e-mail messages by environmental groups and conservative groups, it appeared that no one was particularly pleased.
An official at an energy company that had been pressing the White House to revise power plant rules said the best news was that there was something finally on the table to discuss.
"At least they're coming out with something," the official said. "It may not be what everyone wants, but it recognizes that the Senate is going to deal with climate on its power plant bill."
Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company
