Do the Math: Under the White House Global Warming Plan, Carbon Dioxide (CO2) Pollution Would Continue Increasing at Same Rate as Past Decade

Accounting Tricks Hide Growing Damage Behind Veil of Progress

John Podesta, Senior Fellow, NRDC Climate Center

The new global warming plan announced last week by President Bush relies on a brazen accounting trick to mask the fact that even if his voluntary emissions targets are actually achieved, U.S. emissions of heat-trapping carbon dioxide pollution would keep increasing at almost exactly the same rate they have increased for the past 10 years.

The benchmark for global warming policy is whether it cuts global warming pollution. This plan calls for more pollution growth, at the same dangerous pace as the past decade. In effect, the plan uses Enron-style accounting tricks to hide growing environmental losses behind fuzzy pollution numbers. Based on White House projections, both the intensity and the absolute pollution increase will be the same over the next decade as they have been for the last 10 years.

Here's the math: The president's non-binding goal is to reduce "emissions intensity" - carbon dioxide pollution relative to economic output - by 18 percent over the next 10 years. Specifically the plan sets a target of 151 metric tons per million dollars of gross domestic product by 2012, compared with 183 metric tons today, which amounts to a 17.5 percent decrease (the White House apparently rounded upward in its press materials).

Yet from 1990 to 2000, emissions intensity fell 17.4 percent. That's because economic growth already tends to outpace carbon dioxide increases and has for several decades. But the plan still allows unsafe emissions growth to proceed unabated. Using the administration's own economic growth forecasts, the president's plan translates into a 14 percent increase in global warming pollution over the next 10 years.

A White House fact sheet claims the Bush target is similar to the global warming targets of the rest of the world. In fact, the new plan would result in U.S. emissions reaching a level 30 percent above 1990 levels in 2012. Meanwhile, the rest of the industrialized world has committed to reduce emissions to below 1990 levels by 2008-2012 under the Kyoto Protocol, which was abandoned by the White House last year.

Rollback of Power Plant Pollution Rules
The president also announced new targets for three pollutants from U.S. power plants that would delay by up to 10 years life-saving emission cuts now required under the Clean Air Act. Based on earlier pronouncements by the Environmental Protection Agency, we calculate that the Bush plan would allow three times more toxic mercury emissions than current law. And it postpones mercury reductions by a decade.

We calculate that it would allow 50 percent more sulfur dioxide emissions - which cause acid rain and premature death from respiratory disease - than current law. These weaker standards would be pushed back from 2012 to 2018. It would also allow hundreds of thousands of tons of additional smog-forming nitrogen oxide pollution from power plants, and delay their cleanup for a decade beyond current requirements.

Delaying cleanup of these plants will cause more asthma attacks and more cardiopulmonary disease for thousands of Americans. And we will see thousands more premature deaths.

Budget Numbers
The Bush climate plan proposes $4.5 billion for Fiscal Year (FY) 2003 in total global warming spending - an increase of $700 million over FY 2002 according to administration budget documents. Some parts of the plan actually reduce investments in developing certain clean technologies, such as federal research and development (R&D) into energy efficiency ($52 million reduction), solar energy ($2 million reduction), and geothermal power ($1 million reduction).

Most of the spending represents a continuation of past work on the science of climate change, although there would be expansions in carbon cycle and sequestration research. About half of the increased money in Bush's climate plan goes to proposed new tax incentives for alternative sources of energy, including electricity from closed-loop biomass and wind, residential solar energy, hybrid and fuel cell vehicles, use of landfill gas, and combined heat and power.

The reported size of these tax incentives over the next five years is $4.6 billion, or $7.1 billion over ten years. This ten-year total is about $2.2 billion less than was proposed under the Clinton Administration's Climate Change Technology Initiative, although the five-year total is about the same.

Unfortunately, the Bush administration has also endorsed the House energy bill (H.R. 4), which shovels $17.3 billion in new subsidies at the fossil fuel industry over the next ten years, tilting the ratio more than two to one against clean energy sources when compared to the new Bush climate plan.

Cost Effective Solutions At Hand
Global warming and power plant pollution problems can be solved safely and effectively, with cleaner, more efficient energy technologies - using both conventional fuels and renewable sources like wind and solar power. Legislation to clean up power plants and raise fuel economy standards, both opposed by the administration, would stop U.S. global warming emissions growth completely within 10 years.

The Senate is currently considering the Clean Power Act (S.556), introduced by Senator Jeffords of Vermont, which would limit emissions of all four major pollutants from power plants (carbon dioxide, mercury, sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides) further and faster than the Bush plan, saving thousands of lives and countless hospital visits. Now before the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, the bill has bipartisan support and 19 co-sponsors.

Senators will also be voting on one or more proposals to significantly increase fuel economy standards. Raising fuel economy standards to - for example - 40 miles per gallon by 2012 would save almost 2 million barrels of oil per day (more than we imported from Saudi Arabia last year) and avoid 345 million tons of CO2 emissions.

The good news on global warming is that we know the solution, and we have the technology to deliver it safely and cost-effectively. It's time for our officials to muster the will and get on with it.

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John Podesta is a Senior Fellow with the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) Climate Center, and former White House chief of staff under President Bill Clinton.

NRDC is a national, non-profit organization of scientists, lawyers and environmental specialists dedicated to protecting public health and the environment. Founded in 1970, NRDC has more than 500,000 members nationwide, served from offices in New York, Washington, Los Angeles and San Francisco. More information is available through NRDC's Web site at www.nrdc.org