By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON, Jan 22 2007 (IPS)

Sensing shifts in the political climate that gave Democrats control of Congress in November’s mid-term elections, 10 major U.S. corporations have joined with four environmental groups in calling for mandatory cuts in U.S. greenhouse gas emissions to curb global warming.

The new alliance, which was formally launched at a press conference here Monday, is urging national legislation that that would reduce emissions to as little as 70 percent of current levels by the year 2022 and as much as 40 percent by 2050, based in major part on a cap-and-trade system.

The industry members of the new United States Climate Action Partnership (USCAP) include some of the biggest U.S. energy and manufacturing companies, including Alcoa, BP America, Caterpillar, Duke Energy, DuPont, Florida Power and Light, General Electric, Pacific Gas and Electric and PNM Resources.

“The time has come for constructive action that draws strength equally from business, government and non-governmental stakeholders,” declared Jeff Immelt, chairman and CEO of General Electric, who also released a letter signed by him and the other companies’ CEOs to President George W. Bush, who has consistently opposed legislation and international treaties that include mandatory reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.

The letter, which was sent on the eve of Bush’s much-awaited State of the Union address, calls for “prompt action to establish a coordinated, economy-wide, market-driven approach to climate protection.”

The new initiative, which was also signed by the heads of the New York financial firm, Lehman Brothers, as well Environmental Defence, the Natural Resources Defence Council, the Pew Centre on Global Climate Change, and the World Resources Institute, comes at a moment when global warming appears to have reemerged as a major issue on the national political agenda.

At the same time, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the main international body that has been studying the warming trend, is expected to conclude in its next, due out early next month, that there is a more than 90 percent certainty that global warming is linked to the burning of fossil fuels and that the rate of warming appears to be greater than previously believed.

Moreover, the Democratic victory in the November elections has effectively evicted from key posts in both houses a Republican leadership determined to block any legislation that mandated reductions in emissions, replacing it with Democrats who appear equally determined to move climate change to the top of the legislative agenda, even to the extent of creating a new committee in order to circumvent the House of Representatives Energy Committee whose Democratic chairman is considered overly protective of the big automakers in his home district in Michigan.

Since Congress convened earlier this month, a flurry of legislation has been submitted, including the perennial proposal by Republican Sen. John McCain and Democratic Sen. Joseph Lieberman – most recently joined by Democratic Sen. Barack Obama – that would require industries to reduce their emissions to 2004 levels by 2012 and then further decrease emissions by about two percent a year by 2050.

The fact that both McCain and Obama are leading contenders for their respective parties’ 2008 presidential nominations adds to the prominence the issue is claiming on the political agenda.

Even some Bush administration officials appear eager to move with the political winds. The head of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, James Connaughton, has repeatedly indicated support for a cap-and-trade system, even as Bush’s spokesman has refused to endorse them. Rumours that Bush may feature a major new initiative on warming in Tuesday’s address have also persisted for weeks despite White House denials.

All of this ferment has clearly affected the calculations of major energy and manufacturing companies, which have also become increasingly concerned about the impact on their operations of a bewildering variety of new laws and regulations on emissions that state and local governments have enacted over the past several years in the absence of any action by the federal government to impose uniform standards.

Those laws and regulations have largely reflected grassroots pressure for governments to do something about global warming, pressure that has grown steadily, particularly in the Northeast and the West coast, and that has been fueled by frustration over Bush’s opposition to the Kyoto Protocol, as well as the growing evidence, most famously laid out in last year’s film documentary, “An Inconvenient Truth”, by former Vice President Al Gore.

“Today the world has changed,” said Eileen Claussen, president of the Pew Centre, at USCAP’s launch. “If there is any doubt in Washington, this agreement makes crystal clear that the political tide has turned. Now it’s up to Congress to act.”

The new group does not endorse any specific legislation. Instead, it released “A Call for Action” which lays out a series of “general principles” for government action on global warming – primarily market-friendly mechanisms that would reward companies for reducing emissions, including a mandatory cap-and-trade programme – on which both the companies and -the four environmental groups agreed.

The main goal would be to reduce U.S. emissions, which now account for nearly 25 percent of global annual emissions, to between 90 and 100 percent of current levels within 10 years, between 70 and 90 percent with 15 years, and between 60 to 80 percent by 2050 as part of a global plan – presumably an updated Kyoto Protocol – to stabilise global greenhouse gas concentrations at between 450 and 550 million parts per million. Current concentrations stand at roughly 380 parts per million.

“Stabilising at 450 parts is extremely ambitious,” noted Christopher Flavin, president of WorldWatch Institute, who called the USCAP initiative “really quite remarkable. A year ago, we couldn’t have imagined that we would have a list of really blue-chip companies calling for a mandatory cap-and-trade system.”

“The idea of stopping such climate legislation, which was the corporate sector’s strategy for the first six years of the Bush administration, has now been replaced by the recognition that they would be better off getting climate legislation while Bush is still office than waiting for stronger legislation that would be signed by the next president.”

At the same time, Flavin stressed that the general principles did not address specific issues, such as how much of the comparative burden of reducing global emissions would fall on the United States. “We all know that the devil is in the details, and this doesn’t really address them. It’s clear that there will be big fights to come and there are areas where the companies will likely part company with the environmental organisations,” he said.

In particular, he noted that Duke Energy, which is part of the coalition, is planning to start construction on a large number of coal-fired power plants and may be hoping to “grandfather” them into any new legislation. “If that becomes the model for how we’re addressing the (carbon dioxide) problem, there’s no way we’re going to get to these ambitious goals that they’ve laid out.”

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