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GASSING BUSH: Northeastern Governors Work to Reduce Greenhouse Gasses
By Glenn Scherer . Illustrations by Jim Campbell

In a history making break with the Bush administration’s policy on global warming, a bipartisan group of 10 Northeastern governors has agreed to work together to develop the nation’s first regional greenhouse gas trading program aimed at reducing carbon dioxide emissions from power plants in their states.

Discussions regarding mandatory greenhouse-gas emission caps will begin in September that could put the states on the road to compliance with the Kyoto climate-change treaty, an embarrassing rebuke to the president, who made a decision in 2001 to pull the US out of negotiations on the pact. In another repudiation of Bush doctrine, the states say that their move away from fossil fuels and toward sustainable energy will not only benefit the environment but the economy as well.

The idea for the coalition originated in the New England Governors
Association, but it was New York Governor George Pataki who worked to bring all the players to the table. Pataki challenged the Northeastern states to join him in a CO2 cap and trade program back in April, asking for a response by the end of July.

While it was not surprising that four Northeast Democratic governors—Edward Rendell (PA), Ruth Anne Miller (DE), John E. Baldacci (ME), and James E. McGreevey (NJ)—defied Bush, five Republican state heads—James Douglas (VT), Craig Benson (NH), Mitt Romney (MA), Donald L. Carcieri (RI), and John Rowland (CT)—joined Pataki in breaking ranks with the president’s refusal to address climate change. This, despite backroom coercion by the White House.

“Several of my counterparts in Republican-led states have reported active efforts by the Bush administration to pressure them not to participate in a regional program to implement greenhouse gas reductions,” said Bradley Campbell, Commissioner of New Jersey’s Department of Environmental Protection, in July.

But according to Campbell, only Maryland, was so far siding with the president. “Republican Governor [Robert] Ehrlich has largely aligned himself with the pollution policies of the Bush administration which has been hostile to even acknowledging climate change as a problem.” Indeed, Ehrlich declined Pataki’s invitation, saying he may participate at a later date. While New Jersey’s McGreevey asked for a tougher stance that includes “a bi-state or regional basis to ensure enforceable control of mercury emissions.”

The White House responded to news of the Northeast governors’ coalition by pointing to the administration’s effort to deal with climate change and reduce greenhouse gas emissions in direct relation to growth in the gross national product, by 18 percent over the next 10 years. “We welcome innovation by the states; however, we would be concerned about mandatory approaches that could stifle growth or cost American jobs,” said Dana Perino, a spokeswoman for the White House Council on Environmental Quality Chairman Jim Connaughton. “We’d also be concerned about approaches that would affect the affordability of energy, especially for those on low or fixed incomes.” Environmental groups counter that the Bush plan will not curb but increase CO2 emissions.

The Washington-based utility industry has also greeted the news from Northeast governors with reservation. Executive Director of the Electric Reliability Coordinating Council, a coal-fired power plant lobbying group, Scott Segal finds fault with the coalition’s goals indicating that a CO2 cap would likely drive fuel switching away from coal to already minimal gas supplies.

Campbell argued that the states have been forced to act due to the White House’s lack of leadership on climate change. National and regional climate change assessments generated by US scientists during the Clinton administration—but disregarded by the Bush team as too extreme—forecast dire global-warming consequences for the states, including financially disastrous tidal surges in coastal cities, significant stresses on forest, wetland and estuary ecosystems, and increased human diseases such as West Nile Virus.

The Bush administration’s response to these and other scientific warnings has been feeble at best, and counterproductive. The Bush-Cheney energy plan is seen by environmental groups as a fossil fuel corporate-feeding frenzy, while Bush’s carbon dioxide reduction plan is viewed as corporate volunteerism at its most cynical. The Bush EPA this week announced a refinery and power plant-friendly rule that allows dirty coal-fired industries to continue emitting hundreds of thousands of tons of air pollution, saving the companies millions in emission control equipment. The decision came despite New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer’s contention that the Bush rule “eviscerates” the Clean Air Act and threatens public health. The state will likely sue.

Led by New York and New Jersey, the Northeast governors are looking to act on climate change by moving beyond coal and oil. And they are listening seriously to visionary alternative-energy gurus who see a booming wind-hydrogen economy not decades ahead, but just around the corner.

A QUESTION OF COMMITMENT
“If we can go from making cars to making tanks and bombers in a single year, like we did in World War II, then we can transition to a wind-hydrogen economy in just a few years,” said Lester Brown, founder of the Earth Policy Institute. “But we can only do it if we want to. That level of commitment exists elsewhere. Germany, for example, is planning to cut carbon emissions 40 percent by 2020. The difference isn’t that they have engineering know-how [that] we don’t. It is that they have leadership.”

As agreed to in principle by the Northeast states, the regional carbon dioxide emission cap and trade program would put limits on the amount of CO2 produced by power plants. Each governor’s home state would be allowed to set its own caps, while allowing individual plant owners to trade emission credits with energy producers around the region. For example, one plant might emit less C02 than allowed under the cap; it could sell its surplus to a plant that exceeds its cap. This approach not only limits emissions, but gives both plants a financial incentive to reduce greenhouse gases.

Campbell speculated that the regional cap-and-trade program might prove to be compliant with the terms of the Kyoto Climate Change Treaty, which would allow US power plants, and eventually other industries, to trade their greenhouse gas pollution credits internationally. “There is a long-term possibility that we may, as a region, or as states, be able to participate in Kyoto in spite of the Bush administration’s rejection of the treaty,” Campbell said.

The 1997 Kyoto Protocol calls for a 5.2 percent cut in planet-wide greenhouse gas emissions below 1990 levels, achieved by 2012. The treaty, rejected by the US has been ratified by 100 nations but has yet to be implemented. It still requires approval by countries representing 55 percent of 1990 carbon emissions. If Russia ratifies this year, the treaty goes into effect. America’s cuts in all greenhouse gases under Kyoto were to have been seven percent, made no later than 2012.

Beyond the technical complexities of the cap and trade plan, some US governors are setting significant mandatory quotas for electricity generated by alternative power—wind, biomass, solar, and hydrogen.

THE GREEN GOVERNOR
The most outspoken participant among the states is Pataki. The New York governor has steadily distanced himself from Bush on the climate change issue. “It’s important to remember that Pataki led the way by inviting the Northeast governors to participate in the [cap and trade] initiative back in April, and that he has worked closely with the environmental community on global warming,” said Ashok Gupta, Director of the Air and Energy Program for the Natural Resources Defense Council. “This allows environmentalists, almost three years into the Bush administration, to work in a state where we are still making progress, while others around the country and especially in Washington are fully on the defensive.”

Since taking the White House, the president abandoned the Kyoto Treaty, reversed a GOP campaign promise to regulate power plant CO2 emissions, ignored scientific reports on climate change, and opted for a toothless global warming program. In June, a long section of an EPA environmental report outlining risks from rising temperatures was censored, “whittled to a few noncommittal paragraphs” after White House arm twisting, according to the New York Times.

Bush does offer limited support to sustainable energy. The administration has allocated $720 million in new funding over the next five years to develop the much-hyped “Freedom Car,” a hydrogen fuel cell vehicle. But by comparison, federal coal and oil subsidies now run to $5 billion annually, says Taxpayers for Common Sense. This doesn’t take into account the $55 billion to $96 billion spent yearly by the Pentagon to guard fossil fuel corporate interests worldwide, as calculated by the International Center for Technology Assessment.
Pataki has gone his own way. In June 2001, he launched the Greenhouse Gas Task Force to assist the state in developing policy recommendations and strategies to reduce New York’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. It made tough recommendations, which the governor is striving to meet. In an interview, state Department of Environmental Conservation commissioner Erin Crotty said Pataki’s state energy plan sets a greenhouse gas emission reduction target of five percent below 1990 levels by 2010, and 10 percent by 2020.

In 2002, the governor announced that New York will get at least 25 percent of its electric power from renewable resources such as wind and solar within 10 years. The governor has yet to commit to a specific cap on CO2 emissions from power plants at 25 percent below 1990 levels (a cut the taskforce said can be made at no cost to consumers).

Further, Crotty said, Pataki will adopt the California Zero Emission Vehicle standard to cut carbon dioxide exhaust from cars—a standard just agreed to by automakers. Pataki’s backing of the so-called “California Car” is significant since the Bush administration had joined carmakers in a just abandoned lawsuit blocking California’s initiative.

While New York’s actions might seem paltry compared with the scope of the global problem, they could have a real impact. New York state, if it were its own nation, would boast the world’s eighth largest economy, spending $38 billion on energy alone. New England, combined with New York and New Jersey, would be the world’s eighth largest greenhouse gas emitter.

Pataki’s reasons for supporting global warming action diverge 180 degrees from Bush’s view: “The governor’s philosophy on the environment is that you can’t have a strong economy without a protected environment, and vice versa,” said Crotty. New York state’s economic health is “based on the health of our natural resources. In Long Island Sound alone we have a $5-billion-dollar economy based on everything from tourism to commercial and recreational fisheries, not to mention the Adirondack and Catskill forest preserves, an area twice the size of Yosemite. For us, climate change poses a serious threat to both the environment and the economy.”

GLOBAL WARMING
A 2000 federal report estimated that the state’s temperatures may rise an average 1.7 to 3.5 degrees Fahrenheit by the 2020s due to human-caused global warming, resulting in higher sea levels, coastal flooding, and more severe weather events such as drought and hurricanes. “The Federal Emergency Management Agency modeled the number of Level 5 hurricanes hitting New York City at high tide and doing billions in damage,” said Jeff Jones, communications director for Environmental Advocates of New York (EANY). What’s disturbing, Jones said, is that “while FEMA used to model such an event as a hundred-year storm, they now model it as a 20-year storm.” With New York temperatures projected to rise 6 to 10 degrees Fahrenheit by 2080, such events could become even more frequent.

Christine Vanderlan, also of EANY, says that while she supports Pataki’s CO2 initiative, she feels that the quickening pace of climate change demands more rapid executive action. “While it’s good that the process is moving forward, we were hoping for a more aggressive timetable. We also note that Pataki has conveniently set a rather ambiguous goal of after the next presidential election,” for implementation of the CO2 plan.

Crotty notes another Pataki divergence from Bush’s position. While the president claims that adherence to Kyoto CO2 cuts and a switch to alternative energy will bankrupt the nation, Pataki sees a commitment to wind, solar, hydrogen and biomass as a boon. “We’ve proven that reducing greenhouse gases can be done without harming the economy,” she said. “In fact, we see an economic advantage to encouraging technological innovations here in New York.”

Forward-looking action abroad and by the US governors is indicative of a fundamental change in the political response to global warming. Leaders beyond the influence of the Bush administration are recognizing that inaction on global warming could be catastrophically costly in dollars and human suffering; that popular opinion is shifting in support of decisive action; and that the alternative energy technologies able to abate global warming’s worst impacts are ready today. Best of all, those who implement these sustainable technologies are likely to reap huge economic dividends—in innovative corporate startups, increased jobs and improvements in quality of life.

This bold vision is starting to capture the political and public imagination, and it includes vast wind farms generating unlimited power, pollution-free hydrogen cars, millions of solar roofs, and energy self-sufficient homes that sell power back to utility companies. It promises transformed human landscapes where telecommuters no longer sit in traffic jams wasting gas and time, where urban sprawl is contained, and cities are made livable and pedestrian-friendly.

ALTERNATIVE ENERGY BOOM
A whole suite of new technologies make possible the boom in alternative energy abroad. “One of the most exciting things has been advances in wind turbine design to operate at much lower wind speed and convert much more wind into electricity,” said Lester Brown, the alternative energy expert who heads the Earth Policy Institute. The largest turbines now produce 250 times more electricity than the ones built 20 years ago. “We have enough harnessable wind energy in the US to meet all our energy needs,” Brown said. According to the US Department of Energy, three windy states alone—Texas, North Dakota, and Kansas—can supply all of the nation’s electricity.

Brown paints a future where Western ranchers and farmers plant a new cash crop among their cows and corn: wind turbines that will turn their lands into energy providers as well as food providers. Wind is abundant, cheap, clean, inexhaustible, environmentally benign and, because it is decentralized, free from terrorist threat.

“Once we get cheap electricity from wind, then we have the option of electrolyzing water to produce hydrogen,” said Brown. “And hydrogen is the fuel of the future.”

That future may be closer than we think. “Everyone always talks about hydrogen in relation to fuel-cell cars, but the reality is that if we wanted to move rapidly away from oil, we don’t have to go that route. We could simply convert our internal combustion engines from gasoline to hydrogen, burning the hydrogen directly,” revealed Brown. “It’s fairly simple, requiring minor engine changes probably costing not more than about $200 per car. For that amount, a mechanic at a service station could convert an internal combustion engine to a gas engine that would run on natural gas or hydrogen. In fact, BMW now has a prototype model… From an engineering point of view, it is entirely within range.” It hasn’t been attempted before because hydrogen hasn’t been cheap. A abundance of wind power would change that.

Unfortunately, Brown believes that we may need a climate change disaster, or series of them, on the psychological scale of the Pearl Harbor attack to create the needed urgency for change. “We’re probably going to see trouble first in the food sector, the most vulnerable section of the global economy. The combination of falling water tables and rising temperatures may very soon bring the era of cheap food to an end,” he warned. China is no longer producing enough grain to feed itself. Once its stores are used up, Brown said, that nation of 1.3 billion people is likely to come to the world’s table demanding grain. But continued climate shocks—intensifying bouts of drought and deluge—may make help difficult. “We’re really a lot closer to that moment than most of us imagine,” said Brown. “That could be our wakeup call.”

When the moment comes, Brown hopes the technology and economics will fall into place so we can quickly move to stabilize climate. At that date, the pioneering work of the Northeast governors may be recognized for its innovation.

Should we fail, the cost could be terrible. A new book, When Life Nearly Died, by professor Michael Benton of the UK’s Bristol University, shows that temperature increases over the next 97 years could equal that at the end of the Permian period 251 million years ago. Runaway global warming then triggered the worst mass extinction ever, the disappearance of 95 percent of species on the planet.

President Bush, when he acknowledges modern climate change at all, sees it as a distant threat and challenge. But the problem of global warming—endangering the world’s food supply and even life itself—is with us now. And so are the solutions.

This article originally appeared in Salon.
(www.salon.com/news/feature/2003/07/21/emissions/print.html)
It has been edited and updated from the original.