Bush Administration Wrestles with Climate Change

Katherine Silverthorne

With continued international climate change negotiations less than a month away, the question remains: What role will the U.S. play? The recent climate change announcement by President Bush and statements at the EU-U.S. Summit in Sweden did little to clarify what, if any role the administration intends to play in ongoing Kyoto Protocol negotiations. Any announcements on climate change over the next month will bear close scrutiny from an international community waiting to see if the U.S. will sit by and allow other countries to move forward on the Protocol or obstruct agreement and prevent progress.

The President's June 11, 2001 announcement, on the eve of travels to Europe, steered a course toward increased investment in research into the science of climate change and technologies to measure and monitor greenhouse gas emissions and funding for "cutting-edge" technologies such as bioreactors and fuel cells. He also stated that the U.S. would continue to work within the United Nations framework. He stopped short of committing to reducing greenhouse gas emissions, or taking any mandatory steps to ensure market penetration of cleaner technologies. Once again, the President stated his opposition to the Kyoto Protocol. The announcement was widely criticized by his EU counterparts who said that it was time to move on from analyzing the issue towards action. The U.S. and EU did not find much common ground on climate change during the EU-U.S. Summit either. The EU Presidency Conclusions restate the EU commitment to ratification of the Kyoto Protocol and welcome the U.S. commitment not to block progress on Kyoto. The government of Japan has struck an ambiguous position, emphasizing both its readiness to move forward with the Protocol and its belief that the U.S. must participate. It is unclear whether Japan is conditioning its ratification of the Protocol on the U.S. becoming a party.

Up until mid-March 2001, one would have been hard pressed to define President Bush's position on climate change. Early in his campaign, in the spring of 1999, Gov. Bush declared the "science is still out" on global warming. Then, weeks later at a news conference he stated, "I believe there is global warming." At the Presidential debates on October 11, 2000, Bush said that he thought global warming was a serious problem but that he was "…not going to let the United States carry the burden for cleaning up the world's air, like the Kyoto treaty would have done." His most proactive stance during the campaign came in September 2000, when Gov. Bush declared that he would support mandatory limits on carbon emissions from power plants. In his energy platform on the campaign web site, this policy was articulated as: "Establish mandatory reduction targets for emissions of four main pollutants: sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide, mercury and carbon dioxide."

Climate change became an issue for President Bush in the first week of his presidency. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change approved its updated analysis of the science of climate change on the day Bush was inaugurated. Early the following week, Secretary of State Colin Powell sought and received a delay in the next round of international climate change negotiations so the U.S. could "undertake a review of U.S. policies on climate change." In response, the negotiations scheduled for May 2001were postponed until July 2001.

In February 2001, environmentalists and governments supportive of the Kyoto Protocol were given some hope that the Bush Administration might take a favorable stance on the Kyoto Protocol. At a gathering of G-8 environment ministers in Trieste, Italy, EPA Administrator Whitman stated, "We are supportive of the goal of Kyoto, nothing has changed. What we are reviewing is the implementation strategy." The U.S. was also a signatory on the G-8 Environment Ministers communiqué which states: "We [will] strive to reach agreement on outstanding political issues and to ensure in a cost effective manner the environmental integrity of the protocol." When it came to the timing of Protocol ratification, the issue was clearly stickier for the U.S.; the communiqué states that the Protocol should enter into force no later than 2002 "for most countries."

Any hopes for Protocol supporters generated by these statements were crushed just weeks later when President Bush sent a letter to Senator Chuck Hagel (R-NE) and three other Senators declaring that he opposed the Kyoto Protocol and that he does not "believe that the government should impose on power plants mandatory emissions reductions for carbon dioxide." This reversal of his campaign pledge and clear statement of opposition to the Kyoto Protocol clearly contradicted expectations set earlier by Administrator Whitman.

In case any glimmers of hope remained, the administration subsequently made abundantly clear that it had no intention to pursue the Kyoto Protocol. At a press conference in late March, Administrator Whitman said the U.S. had "no interest" in further negotiations on the Kyoto Protocol. Later that week, President Bush defended his decision saying that the Protocol would be bad for the economy and "… we will not do anything that harms our economy because first things first are the people who live in America, that's - that's my priority." National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice may to have made the most provocative declaration of administration's position. It is reportedly telling EU officials that "Kyoto is dead."

The announcements regarding the administration's position on the Protocol were met with strong reactions in the U.S. and around the world. The announcement seemed to galvanize Democratic support for the Protocol, reportedly provoking House Minority Leader Gephardt to respond: "This is a go-it-alone American policy on the environment, and it must not stand. We have to turn it around." The World Council of Churches called the announcement a "betrayal of [Americans'] responsibilities as global citizens." The EU countries responded with varying degrees of disappointment. A major British paper asserted: "Suddenly, in the space of two short months, America, the 'indispensable nation', begins to resemble the ultimate rogue nation." The Belgian environment minister was harsher, characterizing Bush's position as: "'We'll take the wealth and leave our children to sort out the mess.'" Even some countries that have historically been close allies of the U.S. on this issue, such as Japan and Norway, responded with concern. Norway's environment minister said that her government was "very disappointed and seriously worried."

There were also supportive and sympathetic responses to the announcement. A representative of the Global Climate Coalition, a coalition of businesses, companies and corporations that have been consistently opposed to the Kyoto Protocol reportedly welcomed Bush and Whitman's opposition to what he called an irreparably flawed treaty. He further called the Bush Administration's position "a prudent step, and clearly the right thing to do." Mexico's Environment minister also voiced sympathy for the U.S. position.

Now, President Bush has reaffirmed his opposition to the Protocol and stated his preference for a focus on increased investment in scientific research and key technologies. So what does the future hold for the Kyoto Protocol? That remains to be seen. According to Dutch Environment Minister Jan Pronk, "most countries want to push ahead with talks for a legally binding international treaty to combat global warming despite the opposition of the United States to the Kyoto Protocol." The U.S. has determined it will participate in the upcoming negotiations in Bonn in July 2000, but it is not clear what the administration's goals for this meeting are.

Katherine Silverthorne is senior policy officer of the Climate Change Campaign, World Wildlife Fund-US, and an in-coming co-chair of the Section's Committee on Climate Change and Sustainable Development.