Bush’s Multi-Pollutant Tragedy
Restricting carbon-dioxide emissions would be a major mistake.

By Ben Lieberman, senior policy analyst with the Competitive Enterprise Institute
February 27, 2001 11:15 a.m.

ord is out on the street (well, K Street at least) that President Bush's big speech tonight will include an endorsement of the so-called multi-pollutant strategy — a plan for electric utilities to simultaneously reduce emissions of carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides and possibly mercury. Restricting carbon-dioxide emissions would be a major mistake that could lead the nation down a slope of increasingly disastrous energy and environmental policies.

First off, if the president merely calls carbon dioxide a pollutant, he will be ceding more ground than the science warrants. Carbon dioxide is a natural part of the atmosphere, something every plant takes in and every animal breathes out. Further, it has not been shown that the additional amount of carbon dioxide emitted through fossil-fuel combustion is a real threat. Despite recent hype about carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases causing potentially catastrophic global warming, the scientific evidence is leaning towards nothing more than a harmlessly small temperature increase. There is no public outcry for action on carbon emissions, just the usual hyperventilating from the elites.

Our federal government has not yet capped carbon dioxide, either alone or in conjunction with other emissions, thanks to efforts by Representative Joe Knollenberg (R., Mich.) and others in placing restrictions on doing so in numerous appropriations bills. And, in 1997, the Senate unanimously passed a resolution not to ratify any international agreement to limit emissions of greenhouse gases that substantially burdens the American economy or is not applied to all nations. Nonetheless, the Clinton administration went ahead and signed just such an agreement, the Kyoto Protocol, but never dared to send it to the Senate where it faced certain rejection. Bush also opposes the Kyoto Protocol, but the inclusion of carbon dioxide in multi-pollutant approaches would lead to de facto implementation of the Kyoto Protocol, whether or not the real thing ever gets ratified.

Indeed, once carbon dioxide is labeled a pollutant and targeted as such, even with initial goals that are not overly ambitious, the process will almost certainly lead to a tightening of the screws. It is hard to think of an instance where environmentalists have gotten their foot in the door and not gone on to take over the house.

Even some big electric utilities support the notion of obtaining valuable and tradable rights to emit carbon dioxide. Why not, since competitors and/or consumers will ultimately foot the bill? Coal, natural gas, and petroleum still provide the backbone of our energy needs and will for the foreseeable future. Therefore, substantial carbon reductions could only be achieved by a rationing or taxing scheme that increases the costs of energy to the point where consumers are forced to use less. Ironically, such an approach runs completely counter to the administration's pledge to ensure affordable and reliable energy supplies. Republicans should have an energy policy, not an anti-energy policy.

The Environmental Protection Agency has the most to gain if carbon dioxide is treated like an air pollutant and brought under the purview of the Clean Air Act. Not surprisingly, EPA supports this strategy. But other agencies have raised caution flags about the multi-pollutant approach. . The US Energy Information Administration (EIA) recently conducted a study on the cost of various multi pollutant strategies. The costs go through the roof when carbon dioxide is added to the mix, including a 40 percent increase in the price of electricity.

Bush could learn a lot from the environmental mistakes his father made. In 1990, the elder Bush added a heap of costly and largely unnecessary amendments to the Clean Air Act. This massive piece of legislation did absolutely nothing to help him politically — environmentalists overwhelmingly supported Clinton just two years later. And the statute's massive handover of power to EPA contributed, among other things, to last summer's gasoline price runup, and may have worsened California's electricity crisis by adding further impediments to the creation of much needed generation capacity. Similarly, restricting energy use by adding carbon dioxide to a multi-pollutant strategy will not win the younger Bush any public support, and threatens substantial long-term harm.