|
Five Top Coal-Producing States
|
WASHINGTON -- A not-so-funny thing happened to Christine Whitman, the new head of the Environmental Protection Agency, at the White House Tuesday. For two weeks she had been championing a campaign position taken by President Bush to regulate carbon dioxide as a "pollutant" contributing to global warming.
On Tuesday morning, the president told her he had changed his mind; he wouldn't cap carbon dioxide, and had made a mistake calling it a pollutant.
That decision was made after a series of private meetings and vigorous internal debate, and it represents a startling turnaround with broad ramifications. For one thing, it has seriously undermined Ms. Whitman at the outset of her tenure. "If this was Europe, she'd have to resign," said one European diplomat Wednesday.
More broadly, the switch guarantees an international problem for Mr. Bush with many allies, who fear the move will undercut the so-called Kyoto Protocol, a treaty designed to curb global warming by cutting carbon-dioxide emissions. The European Union promptly voiced its "deep concern," and guardedly negative reactions are being drafted in Paris, Berlin, London and other capitals, diplomats said.
Domestically, the decision is the first major issue on which Mr. Bush has veered away from his campaign promises; significantly, he veered toward a position favored by his party's conservative wing. Among the clear winners in the dispute were a group of industries, including coal companies and some utilities, that have been stridently opposed to completing the Kyoto treaty. The treaty sets specific target levels for reductions of carbon dioxide, methane and several other gases emitted by industrial activities.
But the decision will displease other industries in the Bush coalition, which were prepared to control carbon-dioxide emissions and thought they could benefit from an emissions-trading system in which companies that cleaned up would benefit. And the change is sure to sour Mr. Bush's relations with environmental groups, which had been pleasantly surprised with the start of his administration but were organizing protests Wednesday.
The turnaround was the product of internal wrangling that began when Republican conservatives discovered Mr. Bush intended to refer to regulating carbon dioxide in his first speech to Congress two weeks ago. The conservatives mobilized to stop him from doing so. That process, an administration official says, prompted White House economic adviser Lawrence Lindsey to convene a series of meetings that produced heated discussions about whether Mr. Bush ought to keep his campaign promise.
In those meetings, EPA officials argued for sticking with the promise to regulate carbon dioxide and to proceed with legislation. But officials from the Treasury and State departments were less enthusiastic, arguing that the proposal ought to be considered as part of a broader policy on climate change. Meanwhile, officials at the Energy Department, as well as White House economic and political advisers, argued that carbon-dioxide regulation didn't truly reflect the president's policy, despite the campaign position, and should be discarded quickly. Vice President Dick Cheney, charged with drawing up a Bush energy policy, was similarly skeptical.
President Bush's decision to abandon plans to regulate carbon dioxide as a pollutant produced some winners and losers among Republican stalwarts who had much invested in the outcome.
In favor of controlling CO2:
Enron Corp. CEO Kenneth Lay, one of President Bush's most loyal and generous supporters, urged the president to create a credit trading system for CO2. Enron and its employees contributed $1.76 million to Mr. Bush and the Republicans in the last election.
Opposed to controlling CO2:
The coal industry fervently opposed the plan to control carbon-dioxide emissions, which come from the burning of coal. The industry made $3.8 million in contributions in the last election cycle, with nearly 90% going to Republicans. And while utility companies were split on the issue, the Southern Co. lobbied fiercely against controlling carbon dioxide. The company contributed $1.4 million in the last election, with 74% going to Republicans.
By last week, Mr. Bush called in top staff members and instructed them to undertake a complete review of the emissions-cap issue. At that meeting, aides say, Mr. Bush said flatly that he had erred in calling carbon dioxide a pollutant during his campaign, but left open the possibility of capping emissions of the gas.
Over the next few days, Mr. Bush's domestic-policy team reached out to cabinet secretaries, policy experts and some lawmakers as they vetted the merits of regulating carbon-dioxide emissions. One crucial moment in the deliberations came when Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, who has voiced concern about global warming, was asked for his views and recommended against regulating the gas.
Similarly significant was an obscure study requested by former Indiana Rep. David McIntosh, a staunch conservative who was defeated in a run for governor last year. While still in Congress last summer, Mr. McIntosh said, he called for a study of what a regulation of carbon dioxide would cost the U.S. economy.
At the time, the EPA was saying it had the power to regulate carbon dioxide under the Clean Air Act, but had no plans to do so. "We wanted to get ready for the debate on that," said the ex-congressman.
The study, finished just before New Year's Day by the Energy Department, projected eye-popping increases in electricity and natural-gas costs from regulating carbon dioxide. While the study examined the costs of proposals calling for tighter regulations on four pollutants -- carbon dioxide, mercury, sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides -- it singled out carbon dioxide as being, by far, the most expensive to deal with because "there are currently no commercially available technologies for removing and storing carbon dioxide."
Even with an emissions-trading scheme called for by the president to help reduce the economic cost of removing pollutants, the regulation would multiply the price of a given energy unit of coal by almost four times, the study says, making the use of coal-fired electricity "uneconomical for many plants." Such sticker shock would drive utilities toward using more gas-fired plants, driving the nation's bill for natural gas -- already high -- upward by as much as $25 billion by 2010.
Key aides decided to recommend to Mr. Bush that he shift his position on regulating carbon-dioxide emissions, and last weekend they drafted a statement to four concerned senators explaining that. That recommendation was hashed out at a final large meeting Monday, and then given to Mr. Bush Tuesday morning. At a previously scheduled meeting, he informed Ms. Whitman.
In explaining his decision publicly, Mr. Bush said he switched stands because of projected increases in electricity prices and not because of vigorous lobbying on the issue: "I was responding to realities, and the reality is our nation has a real problem when it comes to energy."
|
If you have come to this page from an outside location click here to get back to mindfully.org |