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Climate Change Policy: A Seismic Shift

Climate change has always been a complex and rapidly evolving issue. But President Bush’s opposition to both the Kyoto Protocol and a carbon limit for the utility sector has created an earthquake in climate change policy, and shifted the tectonic plates of policy development both internationally and domestically in ways that are hard even for experts to assess.

With respect to the United States, the President’s policies have moved the focus away from the international negotiations to domestic action. The policy initiative has shifted from the Executive Branch, which under President Clinton led efforts to address climate change, to the Congress, especially the Senate under its new Democratic leadership. This latter shift recreates the same dynamics of the 1980s in which Congress pressured Presidents Reagan and Bush into strengthening many environmental laws, including the Clean Water Act, superfund, the Resource Conservation and Recovery act, and, of, course, the Clean Air Act amendments of 1990.

The approach to climate change has also moved from one primarily aimed at reducing emissions across the entire economy, as Kyoto might do, to a piecemeal approach in which separate policies will be adopted for specific sectors. Congress is likely to consider legislation to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide in the electric utility sector, and has already begun a separate examination of how to promote sequestration of carbon as part of farm legislation. These two actions are not likely to permit emissions trading between the agricultural and utility sectors.

No better example of policy making by sector exists than the current debate over energy policy. Despite a friendly White House, the automobile industry finds itself very much on the defensive with respect to mandatory improvements in fuel economy for automobiles. Consumer concern about volatile gasoline prices, new technological developments such as hybrid cars, and long-standing national security concerns about imported oil have lit a fire under the Congress to act. Government now seems highly likely to improve auto efficiency for the first time in almost twenty years, and, thereby, reduce greenhouse gas emissions. However, these reductions appear unlikely to be related to any form of an emissions trading system.

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Also in this issue:

• The President's Corner

• Emissions Trading after COP-6 bis

• EMA Calendar of Events