Where’s the Policy?
CO2 flap exposes lack of White House environmental policy.

By Henry Payne, editorial cartoonist and a writer for the Detroit News, and Diane Katz, an editorial writer for the Detroit News.
March 19, 2001 8:30 a.m.

he green lobby is livid that President George Bush retracted his support of costly new limits on utility emissions last week. How dare he defy them because of a mere energy crisis! “A breathtaking betrayal,” fumed Rep. Henry Waxman, who evidently regards his home state of California as a model of a sustainable energy.

Yet, even as the folly of green energy policy has been exposed in his own backyard, Mr. Waxman and his brethren still seem to think that their take on environmental matters is sacrosanct. That they have come to believe so can partly be blamed on the GOP in general, and Mr. Bush in particular.

For three decades now, Republicans have largely ceded environmental policy to the Left. Even when faced with absurd propositions — a ban on chlorine, say, or Kyoto Treaty constraints on economic growth — the GOP typically retreats to the sidelines, from whence comes an occasional mumble about cost. Some, like Rhode Island Sen. John Chafee, actually embrace the liberal orthodoxy that sanctifies Mother Earth.

Granted, the GOP’s environmental squeamishness is partially rooted in the political reality that the media operates as a lobbying arm of radical environmentalism. Attempting to communicate scientific evidence through this filter can be a daunting task. Take, for example, last week’s issue of Time magazine which, despite the deep split within the scientific community on the extent and consequences of global climate change, “reports” that “industrial emissions . . . are slowly turning the earth into a hothouse.”

But whether from fear of attack or sheer ineptitude, the GOP has utterly failed to craft and convey a coherent environmental platform that would engage voters. Faced with claims of melting ice caps, all the convoluted talk about cost-benefit analyses isn’t too persuasive.

On a campaign swing through industrial Saginaw, Mich., last fall, Mr. Bush evidently tried to curry environmental favor (and, perhaps, temper opposition to drilling in the Arctic National Reserve) by pledging to impose new restrictions on carbon-dioxide emissions. Power plants are the principal industrial sources of CO2, which is emitted when coal and natural gas are burned to produce electricity. While also naturally occurring in enormous quantities, CO2 is implicated as a “greenhouse gas” by global warming theorists.

But had Mr. Bush given more than passing thought to this proposal, he would have recognized the obvious pitfalls. Coal-fired power plants — which emit the larger share of CO2 — provide more than half of the nation’s power. In key industrial states like Michigan, the figure is closer to 80 percent.

No smokestack technology even exists to capture CO2, so utilities would effectively be forced to retrofit plants for natural gas or significantly limit power production. Energy costs, meanwhile, would soar (a DOE study estimates by $115 billion a year) as power plants consumed more costly supplies of natural gas.

(Ironically, the very same folks who now decry the Bush tax cut plan as a windfall for the “rich” also advocate emission restrictions that would disproportionately impact lower-income Americans.)

Bush supporters defend the president by noting his consistent campaign statements in opposition to the Kyoto Protocol for its harmful economic impact. In his second debate with Al Gore, for example, Bush addressed a question about global warming: “There’s differing opinions (on the science),” he said, “and before we react, I think it’s best to have the full accounting, full understanding of what’s taking place.

And they point out that his CO2 pledge was but one reference in a policy statement in which he unequivocally opposed any regulation that would so drastically raise energy costs.

Upon his arrival in Washington, however, Bush effectively sabotaged this position by appointing a true believer as EPA chief. And in so doing, Republicans again have surrendered environmental policy to the greens ... with predictable results.

At a Feb. 27 Senate hearing, for example, Christie Todd Whitman directly contradicted Bush’s position on global warming, warning lawmakers: “There’s no question but that global warming is a real phenomenon, that it is occurring. And while scientists can’t predict where the droughts will occur, where the flooding will occur precisely or when, we know those things will occur. The science is strong there.”

Indeed, Bush’s ill-conceived CO2 pledge may never have resurfaced had Whitman not underlined it in television interviews and at a European conference of environmental ministers. With Whitman at EPA’s helm, the carbon-dioxide flap won’t be the administration’s last environmental headache.

The president’s choice of EPA chief is eerily similar to his father’s appointment of William Reilly, who actually championed the 1990 amendments to the Clean Air Act, which have proved to be the most costly environmental regulation in U.S. history.

Consider the consequences. Asked in a 1990 interview why, in seeking reform of the Act, the EPA had lobbied for acid-rain regulation that directly contradicted its own scientific evidence, Reilly replied: “Well, there are other reasons to pass it. For example, we need to address global warming.”

In the absence of GOP leadership, then, many industrial interests also are caving. Major CO2 producers like Cummins Engine, BP Amoco, and Murphy Oil, for example, are simply using climate change to gain a competitive advantage and as a PR weapon. Figuring that the fight for rational policy is lost, these and other companies are now undertaking costly CO2 reductions in hopes of selling government-inspired emissions “credits” down the line. That the investment will yield little environmental benefit is, of course, beside the point.

Fortunately, Mr. Bush realized this week that curbing CO2 emissions would be reckless for an economy short on energy and flirting with recession. Perhaps Whitman will wise up as well. But the CO2 contretemps would have been avoided altogether had the president been more careful with his words — and with putting together his environmental policy team.