Environmental Groups Call on President to Keep His Climate Promise

(10 Oct., 1997 ? New York) The Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) and 17 other major, national environmental groups representing over seven million members today called on the President to keep his pledge to call for a cap on greenhouse gas emissions at the international climate treaty negotiations to be held in Kyoto in December. On more than one occasion the President has pledged to agree to binding limitations of US emissions of greenhouse gases.

“The Environmental Defense Fund is deeply concerned by reports that the administration is considering a ‘capbusting’ escape clause to the climate treaty that would allow greenhouse gas emissions to grow beyond safe levels,” said EDF executive director Fred Krupp. “If you go on a diet and then gain the weight back, plus more pounds, it’s bad for your health. If a climate treaty only cuts greenhouse gas emissions for a short time and then allows them to grow past proposed cap levels the results could be devastating for the health of our planet and our children’s future.”

According to EDF economists, the administration’s ill-considered capbusting clause would make controlling climate change more expensive, because it will discourage companies from innovating to develop cost-effective greenhouse friendly technologies and processes and to take advantage of technology export opportunities. The emissions trading market that the President and Vice-President envisioned, unfettered by price interference, will do a better job at spurring US business to do what it does best: produce better, cheaper, greenhouse-friendly products and technologies that compete and win in the global marketplace.

“The administration has been leaning toward a weaker and slower approach than other nations. Now it’s looking for a way to back out altogether,” said EDF chief scientist Michael Oppenheimer. “If nations can simply abandon emissions reduction commitments made in Kyoto, the climate treaty would be completely ineffective, allowing warming with all its disruptive economic and human consequences. The northward spread of tropical diseases, flooding, rising sea levels affecting coastal cities, destruction of forests and wildlife habitat are just some of the potential outcomes if nations fail to slow the global warming trend.”

“The US must support a treaty that ensures substantial industrialized country emissions reductions below 1990 levels starting no later than the year 2005, in order to make meaningful progress towards addressing the global warming problem. Numerous studies indicate that such reductions are achievable with current and near-term technologies at very reasonable costs,” said Krupp. “A treaty that only freezes greenhouse gas emissions at 1990 levels by 2010 or later, or that includes a capbusting escape clause would be opposed by EDF.”