US DEMOCRATS PROMISE MANDATORY, ECONOMY-WIDE CLIMATE BILL BY END OF THE YEAR
The Washington Post, 7 April 2007
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By Juliet Eilperin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Some sections of a grim scientific assessment of the impact of global warming on
human, animal and plant life issued in Brussels yesterday were softened at the
insistence of officials from China and the United States, participants in the
negotiations said.
In particular, U.S. negotiators managed to eliminate language in one section
that called for cuts in greenhouse gas emissions, said Patricia Romero Lankao, a
scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder,
Colo., who was one of the report's lead authors.
In the course of negotiations over the report by the second working group of the
U.N.
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, U.S. officials challenged the wording
of a section suggesting that policymakers need to reduce greenhouse gas
emissions because countries will not be able to respond to climate change simply
by using adaptive measures such as levees and dikes.
In that instance, the original draft read: "However, adaptation alone is not
expected to cope with all the projected effects of climate change, and
especially not over the long run as most impacts increase in magnitude.
Mitigation measures will therefore also be required." That second sentence does
not appear in the final version of the IPCC Summary for Policymakers.
In a conference call with reporters early yesterday morning, Sharon Hayes,
associate director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy,
said there was "a good deal of discussion" in Brussels over how best to
summarize the report's scientific conclusions.
"And in this summary document there was a lot of care taken by all of the
nations involved in the discussion to make sure that the certainty statements in
this document -- whether scientists felt they had medium certainty or high
certainty or very high certainty about different projected impacts -- were
accurately reflected," Hayes said.
She declined to discuss specific negotiations over language, saying only that
the U.S. government is satisfied with the final report.
Washington was not alone in seeking to alter some of the scientists' findings.
China objected to wording that said "based on observed evidence, there is very
high confidence that many natural systems, on all continents and in most oceans,
are being affected by regional climate changes, particularly temperature
increases." The term "very high confidence" means researchers are at least 90
percent sure of their findings.
When China asked that the word "very" be stricken, three scientific authors
balked, and the deadlock was broken only by a compromise to delete any reference
to confidence levels.
"That was a really hard discussion," said Romero Lankao, who participated in the
talks. But the scientist, a lead author on the chapter examining the effect of
global warming on industry, settlements and society, said the panel's overall
message remained clear: "No one on Earth will escape the impacts of a warming
planet."
Yesterday's report, titled, "Climate Change 2007: Climate Change Impacts,
Adaptation and Vulnerability," warned that human-generated warming is already
making oceans more acidic and parched regions even drier. Twenty to 30 percent
of the world's species may disappear if the world warms another 2.7 to 4.5
degrees Fahrenheit, the authors concluded, and the risk of massive floods will
increase significantly along the coasts because of rising seas and more intense
storms.
Much of the report focuses on how particular regions will fare in a warming
world, concluding that less-developed countries will experience more upheaval
than developed ones. River runoff and water availability is likely to increase
10 to 40 percent at high latitudes and in wet, tropical areas; the regions that
already suffer from shortages of water are likely to have 10 to 30 percent less
available.
NCAR scientist Kathleen Miller -- a lead author of the chapter on fresh water
resources -- said she is confident that dry regions such as the American
Southwest will experience more drought in future decades, but it is hard to
predict how severe the changes will be.
"The extent of the damage will depend on how much warming we experience, and how rapidly it proceeds," Miller said.
The report also examines how infectious diseases might spread in a warmer
climate. Jonathan Patz, an associate professor of environmental studies and
population health sciences at the University of Wisconsin at Madison and a lead
author of the North America chapter, said the currently projected warming alone
will probably mean that by 2050, the Northeast will experience 68 percent more
"red ozone alert" days indicating the air is unhealthy to breathe.
The U.S. strain of the West Nile virus is also especially responsive to warmer
temperatures, Patz added, and Africa is expected to experience an uptick in
malaria, a disease that already accounts for 1 million to 2 million deaths a
year worldwide.
"Climate change presents one of the most challenging environmental and public
health threats of this millennium," Patz said.
Bush's top environmental adviser, James L. Connaughton, told reporters in the
conference call that the report "reinforces" the administration's belief that it
is pursuing the right policies to combat climate change. This includes a push
for increased auto efficiency and greater use of renewable fuels.
But Rep. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.), who chairs a select House committee on
climate change, said the administration is dealing only with a fraction of
greenhouse gas emissions by regulating cars, and Congress is committed to
passing a mandatory, economy-wide limit on emissions by the end of the year.
"The conclusions in the report are so scary that whatever success the Bush
administration may have had in watering down the language won't have any impact
on what the reaction of the world will be," Markey said in an interview, adding
that Bush will soon have to decide whether to veto an emissions cap.
"Congress is heading toward a legislative showdown with the president on this
issue. On that, there's no doubt."
Copyright 2007, The Washington Post