Friday, Jul 4, 2008
A new Department of Energy report undermines the position of U.S. negotiators at a U.N. conference on reducing greenhouse gases.
Nov 17, 2000 | For the past few days, people attending a United Nations conference on global warming in the Hague have been approaching scientist Marilyn Brown. They want her to explain one thing: the curious timing of her pivotal new Department of Energy report, which was released on Wednesday.
"People are saying, 'Why release it now in the midst of negotiations?" says Brown, who prepared the study for the Department of Energy and is speaking by phone from the Hague. "They want to know why we didn't release it before."
The question of timing is an important one since Brown's study, the most recent from the United States government related to global warming, states emphatically that the country can be doing a hell of a lot more to reduce industrial emissions of carbon-based gases. According to the report, reduction goals can be accomplished by offering American companies financial incentives to reduce their emission levels, funneling more money to researching new technologies and pursuing other strategies to promote efficient energy consumption.
The report's findings greatly complicate -- even undermine -- the official position of American negotiators at the United Nations conference in the Netherlands. They contend that the U.S. can't do all that much to lower emission levels domestically and needs to rely heavily on such strategies as "buying" reduction credits from other countries to meet the targets defined in the treaty.
Brown, the chief investigator in the two-year study, is a deputy director of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, which operates under contract with the Energy Department. She is representing the department at the conference but is not one of the U.S. negotiators, and she describes the differences between her stance and that of the official government delegation as "awkward."
"Some people question my sanity and tell me I've gone up off my rocker by advocating these technologies," she says. "But I'm just convinced there's a long way we can go at little or any cost to the economy."
Her belief -- and the report itself -- flatly contradict the assertions of many oil companies and other business interests that any effort to cut emissions significantly will cause a drastic increase in energy prices. Yet some environmentalists fear that the report may have been released too late to have a major impact on the negotiations. Brown says she and her colleagues intended to issue it earlier but were delayed because of reviewers' questions. But she is glad that the report at least came out during rather than after the talks.
The issue is so contentious because the United States, with just 4 percent of the world's population, emits the most carbon dioxide -- 23 percent of the global total -- and yet is advocating for an extremely flexibile plan to reduce its share. Three years ago, world leaders gathered in Japan and agreed to the Kyoto Protocol, which gives industrialized countries until 2012 to collectively reduce worldwide greenhouse gas emissions to 5.2 percent below the 1990 levels.
Under the treaty's terms, the U.S. is supposed to reduce its own gases by 7 percent below 1990 levels. Yet by last year, U.S. greenhouse gas emissions were 13 percent above the 1990 level, complicating the prospects of meeting the treaty's goals.
This month's conference is supposed to determine exactly how nations can reach those numbers. Although some developing countries have ratified the treaty, so far no industrialized countries have. Yet the U.S. and other Western nations must approve the treaty in order for it to have any substantial effect.
The Clinton administration negotiated the treaty, with last-minute intervention by Vice President Al Gore at a difficult point in the discussions. Yet it has not been submitted to the Senate, which must approve it. Since fossil fuels play a key role in every sector of modern life -- from heating our homes and offices to running our cars -- many politicians fear it will significantly drive up the cost of energy and disrupt the booming American economy.
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