Transcript - Global Warming Briefing

June 13, 1997 

PRESS CONFERENCE ON GLOBAL WARMING
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
MERRILL MATTHEWS

WASHINGTON, D.C. Good morning. I'm Merrill Matthews, Vice President of Domestic Policy for the National Center for Policy Analysis, and I'd like to welcome you to this briefing. The NCPA is a Dallas-based think tank that deals in a wide range of issues, including health care, environment, welfare, social security, crime, tax issues, a wide range of things, and we'd like to welcome you to this program dealing with one of the issues that we're going to be looking at and hearing an awful lot about over the next several months as we come down to the treaties in Kyoto in December, and as we look at the possibility of ratification of those treaties.

I'd like to mention also that this briefing will be up three hours after the conclusion of it on the internet. You can access that by going to the NCPA's web site at ncpa.org and you'd be able to hear the audio version of this program.

So I'll start out now by introducing you to H. Sterling Burnett, the NCPA's environmental policy analyst. Mr. Burnett is a Ph.D. candidate at Bowling Green State University, will be finishing up this year. He is also the environmental task force advisor for the American Legislative Exchange Council, and has worked at a number of environmental organizations, including a little stint at the Competitive Enterprise Institute. And he will be your moderator for the program today. Sterling.

H. STERLING BURNETT 		I am pleased to be here today to talk about the truths relating to the Impacts of Global Warming Treaty. We have a full agenda, basically divided into three sections. NCPA has been covering this for a long time. Five years ago we had a study out on the current state of the science then.

Today we're going to look at the science, the impacts of the treaty upon the economy, and whether the proposed treaty, currently under consideration, will help the environment. As our first speaker I'm pleased to have is Dennis B. Fitzgibbons. He's the Deputy Staff Director and the Communications director for the House Commerce Minority Committee.

He joined the Commerce Committee staff as communications director in 1988. He graduated from Harvard College with a B.A. in government. As Deputy Staff Director and communications director, he had been responsible for developing and implementing a political communications strategy for committee Democrats and Congressman John Dingell, the Committee's former chairman and current ranking minority member.

Among the committee's broad jurisdictions are energy policy, food and drug regulations, and environmental protection and regulation. During his service the committee has written a range of laws including laws concerning air pollution, toxic waste, and energy policy. Without further adeau, Dennis Fitzgibbons.

DENNIS FITZGIBBONS 		Thank you, Sterling. Climate change is an issue that up until only very recently had not really captured the attention of a lot of members of Congress, and the opinions on it, at least speaking for the Commerce Committee Democrats, are largely unformed primarily because of the nature of the proceedings. It's a U.N. proceeding with its own peculiar procedures and language, and also because there's no single -- it's very hard to get a hand hold on what's happening in the climate change because there is no agreement as of this time. There have been proposals floated, but there's nothing substantive for people to grasp.

Having said that, I think this panel will be very valuable in answering some specific questions that, among others, John Dingell, the senior Democrat on the Commerce Committee has been posing. One question concerns the science and whether or not we've seen overreaching on the science.

The State Department has concluded that current science proves that global warming is dangerous and requires immediate emissions reductions. But the official U.N. scientific body has gone only so far as to identify a link between human activity and warming. In other words, we don't know with any degree of precision how big the problem is, we don't know how fast it's moving or how it can be mitigated.

The second question concerns whether or not we've seen mission creep. There's been a shift from voluntary to mandatory policies. Now, initially the administration's policy was based on voluntary agreements with industry and a reliance on what was called joint implementation of partnerships between U.S. industry and the developing countries. As an example, U.S. companies would get credit for helping developing countries build clean power plants. But sometime early last year the tone changed and mandatory mission reductions became the goal.

A third question concerns who is representing America's interests. The President has made a promise not to agree to anything that would adversely affect American competitiveness, and the State Department, unfortunately, has agreed to some agreements that are both procedurally and substantively disadvantageous. Now, what that may lead to is an agreement sometime late in '97 in Kyoto that may impose mandatory emissions reductions on the U.S. and perhaps on other developed countries, but with only voluntary steps for the developing nations.

The fourth question concerns the following: even if you agree that climate change is a problem, will the agreement in Kyoto do anything to protect the environment? In other words, if only the developed countries are required to reduce their emissions, what about the developing countries? China, sometime early in the next century, is projected to surpass the United States in its emissions of greenhouse gases.

A fifth question concerns how this whole proposal is going to work. The administration in January 1997 proposed in a negotiating text that went to the U.N. a cap and trade proposal. Now, they did not include specific dates and numbers. Dates and numbers obviously are somewhat important, but there are also other fundamental issues. How would the obligations be assigned and distributed; who would enforce them; how timely would the enforcement be; would countries who complied with the schedule on time put themselves at a disadvantage if others don't; and even if the developing countries are exempted, wouldn't this be an invitation for them to run up their admissions to gain a competitive advantage.

You've got additional problems with devising a trading scheme. If a company operating in one country reduces its emissions, do those emissions stay with the country or can the company use those to offset operations elsewhere? There have been already a series of hearings in the Commerce Committee on these. There will be more coming up. I think these are all relevant questions for you to address, and I wish you well.

Next page...