By Stephen Leahy
BROOKLIN, Canada, Jan 13 2004 (IPS)

The recent critique of U.S. climate-change policies by UK Chief Scientific Advisor Sir David King is a reminder of how differently the two nations approach the issue of global warming.

In an article in the current issue of the U.S. journal ‘Science’, Sir David chides the administration of President George W. Bush for insisting that more research is needed on climate change when, “we already know enough about the problem to agree on the urgent need to address it”.

Global warming is a far greater threat to the world than international terrorism, he adds.

Sir David also criticises the U.S. approach of market-based incentives and voluntary measures, which he says have done little to reduce the nation’s greenhouse gas emissions.

Only 50 companies, a small fraction of the thousands of U.S. firms with pollution problems, have agreed to reduce emissions. Of these, only 14 have set goals under the administration’s two-year-old Climate Leaders Programme, the ‘Washington Post’ reported earlier this month.

In stark contrast, the British government has a long-range target to reduce carbon dioxide emissions 60 percent by 2050. And it wants other developed countries, especially the United States, to follow its lead.

Recent private and public investments in offshore wind power and other alternatives are expected to bring the UK’s green energy share to 10 percent by 2010.

Green energy now provides less than two percent of U.S. supply.

Yet U.S. officials maintain their approach is valid.

“We’re extremely proud of our global climate change action programme,” says Dana Perino, director of communications at the White House’s Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ).

CEQ Chairman James Connaughton, senior environmental advisor to Bush, came under fire from the media after censoring passages on global warming in a major U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) report last year.

“We have good buy-in into these voluntary programs from our industry partners,” Perino said in an interview Monday.

“A number of new members to the Climate Leaders Programme will be announced this week.”

The overall programme will reduce U.S. greenhouse gas emissions relative to the size of the U.S. economy by 18 percent by 2012, she added.

However, the U.S. General Accounting Office, an independent research arm of the government, concluded the Bush plan would reduce overall emissions only two percentage points below what the nation would achieve with no federal programme whatsoever.

More than 20 percent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions are generated in the United States, which has four percent of the world’s population, while Britain – with two percent of the Earth’s people – produces just 2 percent of the emissions.

But the Bush administration “strongly disagrees” with Sir David’s criticisms and the need for mandatory reductions, such as those under the Kyoto agreement, says Perino.

Kyoto, which Bush refused to sign, would have imposed “severe economic hardships” on the country while doing little to reduce overall emissions, she says.

If ratified, Kyoto would commit individual countries to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide and other gases from the burning of fossil fuels to a level that is six percent less than was generated in 1990.

Voluntary reductions, carbon sequestration and U.S. ingenuity, such as the development of ‘clean coal’ technology, will be enough to slow the growth of emissions, Perino says.

Equally important, this ingenuity is needed to help southern countries develop their economies without “suffering environmental consequences”. If the United States can help in that regard, says Perino, it has an obligation to do so.

Sir David says it is a myth that reducing carbon emissions will impoverish nations. Between 1990 and 2000, Britain’s overall emissions fell 12 percent while its economy grew 30 percent, he points out.

A UK government report, ‘Our Energy Future: Creating a Low Carbon Economy’, released February 2003, found that the costs to achieve a 60 percent reduction in emissions averaged 0.5 to 2 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product (GDP) in 2050.

Although substantial, such costs would be more than offset by the reduction in severe weather-related risks, it concluded.

Britons are huge supporters of emissions reductions and the Kyoto agreement, says Roger Hickman of the environmental group Friends of the Earth UK.

“People want to do something to lessen the impact and are very keen on renewable energy,” he told IPS.

Most people believe the devastating floods in Britain and Europe in 2000 and the summer heat wave of 2003 were a result of climate change, says Hickman.

And they might be right.

Swiss scientists reported this week that global warming appears to be generating climate instability, which could mean that every second summer in Europe is likely to be as warm, if not warmer, than the summer of 2003.

In Britain, the number of people at high risk of flooding was expected to more than double to nearly 3.5 million by 2080. And damage to properties could run to tens of billions of pounds every year, writes Sir David.

Strong action needs to taken now to avoid more substantial, more disruptive and more expensive changes in the future, he concludes.

“We in the rest of the world are now looking to the USA to play its leading part.”

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