CREDIT FOR ENVIRONMENTAL ACHIEVEMENTS always comes hard for Republicans. Sure enough, the Bush administration’s global warming policy, though largely a model of prudent judgment and respect for science, is relentlessly denounced. And the attacks take their toll. The Bush team’s alleged indifference to an issue of planetary importance has drained all credibility from its environmental policies at home and diminished American “soft power” abroad. It doesn’t have to be so. A review of the Bush policy shows not only that its principal elements are sound, but also that its chief weakness–the self-contradiction of a policy that admits the need for action, yet rejects even modest mandatory measures to control greenhouse emissions–could be readily reversed. By adopting a program of moderate greenhouse limits–for which there exists a cost-effective, road-tested model consistent with conservative principles–the administration could convert global warming policy from a drain on its political strength and credibility into an asset.
In all its major statements on global warming, the administration has agreed that human activities have increased atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases and will continue to increase them; that this may have caused some measurable change in global temperature; and that the prospect of further temperature increase is a legitimate national and international concern, justifying a response.
But the administration rightly rejects the Kyoto Protocol, the 1997 international agreement on greenhouse limits, as both ineffective and mismatched to the problem. Since Kyoto imposed no obligations on developing countries, which will emit over half of all greenhouse gases by about 2020, even perfect compliance by the covered countries would not significantly reduce global emissions. What’s more, any costs resulting from global warming will probably increase slowly over many decades. Yet for the countries it covers, Kyoto sets absurdly short, tight, and costly reduction deadlines, which almost no one will meet.
The administration also rightly rejects calls for establishing a planetary carbon limit by some unspecified means, and then setting up a global market in carbon “emission rights.” We do not know enough at present to establish a planetary limit. Even if we did, taking the next step and assigning country by country control responsibility would be politically impossible as long as the cost of carbon control remained high. Distributing emission rights in proportion to current carbon emissions would force poor countries to buy allowances from the rich as they developed. But favoring poor countries would require rich countries to buy allowances from the poor–or from the elites who govern them–simply to keep their economies running. And it might not even work. Many poor countries cannot control illegal logging or electricity theft. How could they be expected to control carbon emissions?
Instead, the administration champions a new approach to global carbon control, one that is workable and fair for rich and poor alike. It seeks reductions not in carbon emissions directly, but in the “carbon intensity” of an economy–the ratio of carbon emissions to gross national product. If the carbon intensity of a country’s economy falls by 20 percent, that economy can grow by 20percent without increasing its carbon emissions. When carbon intensity falls faster than the economy grows, carbon emissions decrease.
This approach rewards cleaner growth, not diminished growth. In a world two-thirds of whose people live in poverty, curbing growth is both immoral and politically unacceptable–witness the rejection of Kyoto obligations by developing countries.
Since economies that use current technology have unavoidably high carbon intensity, only new, carbon-free technologies can reconcile economic growth with carbon control. Accordingly, the Bush administration seeks to spur the development of cars that run on hydrogen, ways to burn coal without carbon emissions, and new, safer nuclear power plants. Success in developing these technologies might eventually make global carbon regulation possible.
Finally, the administration supports a modest reduction beyond projected levels in the carbon intensity of the American economy over the next nine years. But here’s the rub: It proposes to achieve these reductions by purely “voluntary” means. Multi-billion dollar government subsidies for the development of carbon-free technologies are part of the plan, along with government-induced commitments from specific industrial sectors to reduce carbon intensity. To promote that reduction, regulators at the Department of Energy are writing rules by which industries, down to the individual company level, will keep detailed accounts of their greenhouse gas emissions. And the regulators are setting up a government registry for greenhouse gas reductions, designed to assure the reducing companies that they “will not be disadvantaged under any future climate program.” That is, if some future government program mandates limits on emissions, companies will get credit for reductions they have already made.
To defend this approach, the administration argues that mandatory controls would violate conservative principles, grow into an oppressive regulatory monster, cost too much, and damage the coal industry, an important Bush constituency. It also contends that the science is too inconclusive to justify more than voluntary measures and subsidies. These claims, weak to start with, will almost inevitably grow weaker over time.
THE ADMINISTRATION has ardently solicited participation in its carbon-intensity reduction program. But government-encouraged voluntary programs to achieve broad economic goals like reducing inflation have always failed. There is no reason to believe reducing carbon intensity will be different. And encouraging technical innovation by government subsidy has a comparably unimpressive record.
Far from respecting conservative principles, jawboning companies into “voluntary” reductions and then monitoring their progress reverses the conservative approach from Hayek on of creating one rule for all alike and letting individuals decide how to comply. It raises the prospect of extra-legal state pressure on the private world. Encouraging companies to register emission reductions by suggesting those reductions will have value in the future is even worse, since it encourages present action–in the absence of any legal requirement–with a vague promise of future government benefits.
The administration’s call for voluntary emission reductions and its supporting regulations make sense only on the assumption that the government will impose mandatory controls fairly soon. Who would participate in a “voluntary” reduction program except to stave off a mandatory one? Similarly, company-by-company greenhouse emissions accounts are not needed for general debate on greenhouse policy. Why develop them except as a step toward mandatory controls? Finally, who would participate in a program to register reductions so as not to be “disadvantaged under a future regulatory program” unless they believed such a program was coming?
Since the prospect of a mandatory program powers the present “voluntary” emissions reduction programs, those programs will stop running if the prospect recedes. Indeed, either the success or the failure of the voluntary efforts will strengthen the demand for a mandatory program: To the extent the initiatives succeed, they will create both the accounting infrastructure such a program would need and a constituency for it in the form of the companies that have already made reductions. Failure will even more directly bolster demand for stronger measures.
Similarly, the administration’s subsidy program makes sense only if the promised technologies will be both developed and put to use. To the extent the development effort fails, the pressures for a new approach will increase. Success will produce calls for new regulations making sure these technologies are actually employed.
And even before success and failure can be measured, the administration’s commitment to a greenhouse program made up of many small government-sponsored steps like subsidy grants and voluntary reduction commitments presents an irresistible temptation to claim environmental credit for each new measure, even while denying the need for anything more. But if the problem is so real that limited steps are oversold, why are more effective measures rejected?
THE QUESTION is especially compelling since the approach the administration rejects–a combination of mandatory limits and a free market in emissions rights–would harness the power of private initiative to improve technology and efficiency. Its rules would automatically give every participant an equal incentive to pursue emission reductions without any need–or room–for special government intervention.
Here, the administration should take its inspiration from the Environmental Protection Agency’s “acid rain” control program, which runs on market principles with notable success. It has reduced power plant sulfur emissions by two-thirds since it began operating, at a cost one-third of industry estimates and half of government estimates, while relying on a government administrative staff of twenty.
Traditional regulatory programs have often expanded beyond their original boundaries through the invisible “mission creep” of many small decisions. Market-based programs have not. They specify up front the costs they will impose; the legislature and all affected parties see what is being authorized. And since they operate through a small set of clearly defined rules, it is hard to expand their scope surreptitiously. The EPA has not materially changed the framework of the acid rain control program since Congress defined it in 1990, though the Bush administration is now asking Congress to expand it.
Any greenhouse program consistent with Bush administration goals would aim not at achieving the Kyoto targets, but at reducing the carbon intensity of the U.S. economy by encouraging long-term technical innovation. But the acid rain precedent suggests that even a limited program, by giving the imprimatur of political commitment to modest carbon-reduction efforts, and establishing an efficient framework to achieve them, could well produce greater reductions than we now expect. Accordingly, such a program could start with very limited burdens, subject to later congressional adjustments as developing science and its own success might dictate.
These new steps would be fully justified by science, even though the current consensus that unchecked greenhouse gas emissions will cause environmental damage could still be wrong, and even though science cannot now predict the timing, geographic distribution, or exact impacts of any future warming.
Without new measures, atmospheric carbon levels will inevitably continue to rise. According to the official study, under the “most likely” scenario, atmospheric carbon will double by 2100, to levels not seen in 20 million years. To stabilize atmospheric carbon at twice preindustrial levels would probably require a 60 percent decrease in developed-country carbon emissions and a much greater reduction in the carbon intensity of their economies.
Given the certainty of atmospheric carbon increases, the uncertainties in global warming science may counsel less action, but not necessarily no action, to moderate its dangers. The risk of a future heart attack may call for weight loss and exercise even when it does not call for surgery.
The administration, after all, has already found the greenhouse consensus adequate to call for developing new technology and reducing carbon intensity. The question whether it has selected the right means to achieve those ends does not involve science at all.
The administration’s contention that greenhouse science is strong enough to support the current Bush policy, but not strong enough to justify any further efforts, has almost required it to talk out of both sides of its mouth, stressing the legitimacy of global warming concerns to some audiences, and the flimsiness of the evidence to others. This has invited critics to assume that the administration’s entire global warming program is only lip service.
If the existing scientific consensus solidifies and carbon levels continue to rise, the only available responses short of policy change will be to stress the remaining uncertainties even as they get less significant, or to remain silent. But denial and silence won’t work forever. Only the most unlikely of all developments–scientific proof that global warming concerns have been so exaggerated that even the coming carbon increases can be accommodated without danger–could stop this downward spiral.
Plainly, then, the current Bush policy is unsustainable. Both its own internal logic and the course of events will make it steadily harder and more politically costly to defend. Yet a course correction now can head off this trouble.
By simply endorsing the eventual need for a modest mandatory greenhouse control program and beginning to develop it, the administration, at a stroke, with no sacrifice of principle and at modest economic cost, could burnish its credibility on the environment. True, Bush’s noisiest critics wouldn’t be swayed. But fair-minded people both here and abroad would be forced to sit up and take notice.
William F. Pedersen practices law in Washington, D.C.
