Issues: Global Warming

April 12, 2001

President George W. Bush
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20500

Dear Mr. President:

On behalf of the 450,000 members of the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), we are writing to register our strong disagreement with your Administration's policies on global warming, and to urge you to reevaluate your positions on this vitally important matter.

We fear that the hasty decision to abandon your campaign pledge to control global warming pollution from power plants will have massively destructive consequences for the earth and its people. From a global perspective, this was the single most important commitment you made in your campaign, not just on environment, but on any issue. In our view, a pledge on so important a matter should not have been disregarded, especially not so hastily and with so little factual analysis.

We are similarly concerned about the repercussions of the confused and generally destructive signals your administration has sent to the international community on the global warming issue, especially the repeated statements to the effect that you have no interest in implementing the Kyoto Protocol to reduce global warming pollution.

In February your foreign policy officials requested, and received, a delay in the meeting of the parties to the Rio Climate Treaty, previously scheduled for May 2001. When the State Department requested this delay, it explained to other countries that the Administration was conducting a comprehensive review of climate change policy that could not be completed by the May meeting. At the G8 environment ministers meeting in Trieste in early March, the United States signed a declaration committing to "strive to reach agreement on outstanding political issues and to ensure in a cost-effective manner the environmental integrity of the Kyoto Protocol."

Yet on March 13, before your policy review had been undertaken, you announced your opposition to the Kyoto Protocol. We are puzzled as to how the express statement of a need for a thorough review, and the commitment to working with our allies to reach agreement on outstanding issues, can be reconciled with your hasty and seemingly definitive denunciation of the Kyoto agreement.

Perhaps most troubling is the absence of adequate legal and factual analyses to support these momentous global warming policy shifts. For example, in announcing the abandonment of your campaign commitment to control global warming pollution from power plants, a central explanation was a supposed realization that carbon dioxide "is not a pollutant." We are mystified by this conclusion in light of an April 1998 legal opinion by the General Counsel of the Environmental Protection Agency that specifically held carbon dioxide to be a pollutant under the Clean Air Act. To our knowledge this is the only government legal opinion on this matter.

The other central reason cited for the reversal on control of power plant pollution, the current energy crisis in California, is equally at odds with readily available factual material. There is no relation between California's current electricity woes and the longer-term program to reduce global warming pollution from power plants. The proposed bills to reduce comprehensive power plant pollution all provide a substantial phase-in period that is much longer than the expected duration of short-term electricity shortages in California and other areas.

Opposition to the Kyoto agreement appears to be founded on a similarly dubious factual basis. You have asserted that the Kyoto agreement would "cause serious harm to the U.S. economy." In 2000, the United States Department of Energy published extensive analyses concluding that compliance with the agreement would have less than a 1% impact on the Gross Domestic Product. It would of course be understandable for your administration to review prior analyses in deciding its position on global warming. However, we are not aware of any major new analyses on this matter by your administration. It is puzzling why, on so important an issue, you would move so hastily to abandon the international process that time could not be taken to consider and review the evidence.

Mr. President, you have also asserted that the Kyoto agreement is unfair because it does not establish the same reduction targets for China and India as for the United States. This is, we submit, a tortured interpretation of fairness.

We urge you to consider that the United States and other developed countries are among the wealthiest nations on earth. Together we have put into the atmosphere about 75% of the carbon dioxide that has accumulated since the start of the industrial revolution 150 years ago. We further urge that you consider the relative economic ability of the U.S., India, and China to take the first steps in demonstrating that we can fight global warming.

• In India, 108 of every 1000 children die before age 5 -- a mortality rate thirteen times higher than in the U.S. China's mortality rate for these children is six times higher than ours.
  
  
• In India, close to half the population attempts to survive on less than $1 per day; in China, one in five people lives on this level.
  
  
• The average American uses more than fifteen times more electricity in a month than the average person in China, and thirty times more than the average person in India.

Your apparent demand that India and China make equal commitments to control carbon dioxide, as a condition for the U.S. to take a first step along with other wealthy nations, ignores these realities. This stance mirrors the oil company rhetoric of recent years designed to destroy the international momentum toward control of global warming pollution. But it flies in the face of Americans' vision of our country as a compassionate and responsible world citizen.

We are also disturbed by the reductions in your budget for climate change activities. The significant cuts in funding at the Department of Energy for federal research on energy efficiency and renewable sources of energy are indefensible. These programs have a proven track record of developing technologies that can create jobs, save consumers money, and reduce greenhouse gases and other pollutants. It is also difficult to understand other cuts across a range of agencies for science programs related to climate change. That is why the Senate passed with bipartisan support the Kerry-Collins amendment to the budget resolution adding $4.5 billion to your budget over the next ten years for climate change activities, including international negotiations.

In view of these facts, and the clear scientific consensus that we must start acting now to address global warming, we respectfully urge you to reevaluate your positions on global warming pollution, and the Kyoto agreement. We believe that a careful look at the very best information available will convince you that further delay -- in action at home and in reaching international agreements to reduce greenhouse gas pollution -- will do harm to the United States as well as to the rest of the world.

Thank you for your attention.

Sincerely,

John H. Adams
President

last revised 4.12.01