Push to cut carbon emissions heats up

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Push to cut carbon emissions heats up
By Bill Lambrecht
POST-DISPATCH WASHINGTON BUREAU CHIEF
01/27/2007

WASHINGTON — By 2030, Illinois will feel like Arkansas now with longer and hotter summers — but with more storms and unpredictable weather, climate researchers predict. By the end of the century, parts of the Midwest could be as steamy as Texas today.

"One thing we clearly know is that it will be a whole lot warmer, and the rainstorms probably not as gentle as when I was growing up on a farm in Carlyle, Ill.," said Donald Wuebbles, a climate researcher and director of the Director of School of Earth, Society and the Environment at the University of Illinois.

Wuebbles and other scientists will tune in this week for the release of a new international study that is expected to make the strongest link yet between the burning of fossil fuels and global warming.

The report will arrive on the heels of key developments in Washington that appear to build momentum for a national plan to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping greenhouse gases. But despite a new push by congressional leaders and even a nod to the issue by President George W. Bush, big battles are brewing, with powerful politicians likely to resist dramatic changes that would pain their constituents.

This week's study comes from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the main international body studying the issue. It represents the latest thinking from more than 2,000 of the world's leading scientists in what is billed as the largest scientific analysis of peer-reviewed literature ever. The report will analyze how the climate has changed over centuries and predict how it will change in the future.

Sources familiar with the study said last week that it would conclude that there was roughly a 90 percent certainty that most of the planet's warming since the mid-20th century could be traced to human activities. "Mild winters or the lack of winter, melting glaciers — these are the things that get people's attention and are driving the political system," said Vicky Arroyo, director of policy analysis at the nonpartisan Pew Center on Global Climate Change in Washington.

Pushing back

The new report will be embraced by some in Congress as further evidence of the need for mandatory limits on emissions from factories and cars, a highly contentious goal that will draw opposition from members with coal, oil and automotive interests in their districts.

An example is Rep. John Shimkus, R-Ill., a member of the House Energy Committee. Shimkus said he would be looking for allies in both parties to help prevent undue damage to the Illinois coal industry.

"There were communities in Southern Illinois devastated by the Clean Air Act," he asserted. An aide to Shimkus later cited Pinckneyville as one of the Illinois towns that suffered because of a downturn in the coal industry that followed Clean Air Act amendments aimed at reducing the use of high-sulfur coal.

"The public as a whole thinks we ought to start addressing this issue, and you don't want to be the guy who blocks it," Shimkus said. "But we need to ensure that as we move to address the global warming debate that we don't react so strongly that we shut down industries."

The movement toward a full-fledged congressional debate, dormant as recently as late last year, picked up steam last week when an alliance of U.S. corporate leaders gathered in Washington to declare their support for new air pollution limits and a "cap-and-trade" system giving industries flexibility to comply. Under cap-and-trade, companies have the right to buy and sell pollution rights within an overall limit decreasing over time.

The CEOs represented 10 companies that produce a host of products from heavy equipment to chemicals to electricity. They concluded that the scientific evidence about climate change and its causes was sound and that their industries needed to make investments now to prepare for what was described as a "carbon-constrained" future.

The executives said they expected their alliance to grow, and they were right: They won an early and significant endorsement of Wal-Mart, the world's largest retailer.

Acid-rain parallel

Bush has been skeptical of the link between rising planet temperatures and the burning of fossil fuels. But in his State of the Union address last week, he referred to "the serious challenge of global climate change."

Bush's main focus was energy security and reducing dependence on foreign oil. He proposed using more ethanol and promoting fuel efficiency to reduce gasoline consumption by 20 percent in 10 years, a goal that also addresses climate change.

Even though the president did not embrace carbon emission limits or broader solutions, climate-change experts viewed his statement as another breakthrough.

"It is clear that the country is moving rapidly to some sort of national greenhouse gas emissions regimen, a dramatic shift accelerated by both the science and the elections," said Philip Sharp, president of Resources for the Future, a think tank in Washington.

Sharp, a former Democratic congressman from Indiana, says the battles shaping up now over global warming are similar to those in the late 1980s over acid rain.

In the years after President Ronald Reagan's infamous assertion that "trees cause more pollution than automobiles," Republicans and Democrats alike embraced the movement to reduce sulfur dioxide — a pollutant from coal and oil and a main source of acid rain. Similarly, 2008 White House hopefuls in both major political parties are promising to aggressively fight global warming.

The issue became a protracted battle in Congress that pitted regions of the country against one another and split the Democratic Party, in control of Congress much of the time.

Then as now, Sharp recalled, the issue of how to limit damage to coal-producing areas was one of the toughest to deal with.

Tipping point?

This year, signs of discord and turf battles are already appearing.

Some House Energy Committee members, for example, don't like Speaker Nancy Pelosi's announcement earlier this month that a new Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming would play a role in legislation.

"There's a lot of dissension," Shimkus said, referring to committee members' concerns about the special panel. Pelosi, D-Calif., has said that it will not encroach on the Energy Committee.

Phil Clapp, a former congressional staff member and president of the National Environmental Trust, an advocacy group based in Washington, said the chances of reaching agreement were enhanced by the strong environmental credentials of Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev.

Clapp said he was convinced that many Republicans, like the Democrats who now run Congress, were eager for an agreement.

"Where we are is that public and congressional leadership have reached a consensus and major business leaders have gone public saying that we want action now," he said. "We have reached the tipping point."