CLIMA1 E WATCH =CHIEF AN INFORMATION UPDATE FROM THE GLOBAL CLIMATE COALITION February 26, 1998 Volume 5, Issue 15 KYOTO: 'FATALLY FLAWED' LABOR, INDUSTRY. FOREIGN POLICY EXPERTS URGE REJECTION OF "ANTI-U.S." CLIMATE AGREEMENT At the first Congressional hearings on the Kyoto Protocol, February 4, spokesmen for American labor and business were united in denouncing the terms of the climate agreement and urging President Clinton to reject it. "We believe that the President should not sign the Kyoto Protocol as it does not meet his own test for full binding commitments by the global community, and that he must fully engage the nation in a discussion about the consequences of the path he would have us follow in the years ahead," the AFL-CIO's David Smith told the House Science Committee, speaking on behalf of the confederation's 13 million members "and their almost 40 million family members." He expressed the AFL-CIO's disappointment at the lack of attention to the likely impact on American workers and their families, hundreds of thousands of whom could lose jobs, be displaced and "find their working lives and their communities disrupted." "FATALLY FLAWED...CANNOT BE FIXED" "The Kyoto Protocol is fatally flawed and cannot be fixed," Global Climate Coalition chair Connie Holmes told the House Committee. Noting that the Coalition represents more than 230,000 American companies with several million workers, Holmes said ratification of the climate agreement would cause substantial economic damage and loss of jobs, but would not achieve its stated goal of stabilizing greenhouse gas concentrations. "The President should not sign this flawed treaty," she said. "The Senate should not approve it. The Congress should not pass legislation to implement its provisions. And the Administration should not implement it without ratification." In addition to its serious and disproportionate economic impact on the United States, Dr. Holmes warned that the treaty would establish a new U.N. bureaucracy with authority to control Americans' energy use. "For the first time in history, a foreign entity would have the power to limit U.S. economic growth, intruding on U.S. sovereignty." Members of the panel of both parties expressed their agreement with the speakers. JOB LOSSES UNDER KYOTO AGREEMENT Alabama 62,500 Alaska 2,600 Arizona 125,000 Arkansas 17,300 California 411,000 Colorado 40,000 Connecticut 30,600 Delaware 4,000 Florida 76,000 Georgia 45,300 Hawaii 14,600 Idaho 14,600 Illinois 240,000 Indiana 104,000 Iowa 25,300 Kansas 30,600 Kentucky 50,600 Louisiana 48,000 Maine 9,300 Maryland 46,600 Massachusetts 34,600 Michigan 125,300 Minnesota 40,000 CLIMAI E WATCH 4/17111EF" SENSENBRENNER: TREATY FAILS THREE BASIC CRITERIA The first congressional hearings on the Kyoto treaty were chaired by Representative F. James Sensenbrenner, Jr. (R-WI), chairman of the House Science Committee. He outlined three key criteria when judging the treaty: "Is the science sound? Will the treaty work? And is the treaty fair?" Sensenbrenner noted that under examination the science was not as sound as proponents of the treaty claimed. "Professor Bert Bolin, chairman emeritus of the Intergovenmental Panel on Climate Change — the group of scientists that assesses and reviews worldwide climate research — told the Kyoto negotiators that the science of climate change has 'considerable uncertainties' and that the climate system is 'only partly predictable.' His repeated emphasis on the scientific uncertainties raises valid concerns about the maturity of the science underpinning the Kyoto Protocol" Sensenbrenner said in his opening statement. "Even basic questions about the temperature record remain unanswered, and scientists are still grappling with the discrepancy between the ground-based temperature record, which shows warming, and the satellite record, which shows a slight cooling. In short, what we heard at Kyoto, and have heard subsequently, is that the climate treaty is based on immature science." Sensenbrenner also noted that the treaty could not work "because developing countries have not been required to assume binding emissions reductions." "The agreement will merely shift emissions from industrialized countries to developing countries. The end result will be that the U.S. will lose jobs and the environment will suffer because many of the countries exempted from the agreement also have lower water and air pollution standards. "Also of great importance is the practical question of how the Kyoto Protocol would work in practice. If, as the old adage goes, the devil is in the details, then the Kyoto pact is one devilsh treaty. Indeed, the very nature of the negotiating process, which operated through consensus, determined that the agreement would include only broad concepts." Lastly, Sensenbrenner stated that the Kyoto treaty lacked fairness. "The Kyoto Protocol only binds developed countries to greenhouse gas reduction targets, while for large polluters such as China, India, Mexico, Indonesia, and Brazil it's business as usual. By placing the burden of emissions limits solely on the United States and other developed countries, Americans will now be at a competitive disadvantage against foreign competition. Higher energy costs and cumbersome regulations will encourage American industries, agriculture, and jobs to move overseas to countries where the protocol imposes no obligations." Mississippi 28,000 Missouri 57,300 Montana 14,600 Nebraska 28,000 Nevada 30,600 New Hampshire 6,600 New Jersey 159,600 New Mexico 12,000 New York 145,300 North Carolina 133,000 North Dakota 2,600 Ohio 77,300 Oklahoma 26,600 Oregon 14,600 Pennsylvania 44,000 Rhode Island 2,600 South Carolina 32,000 South Dakota 6,600 Tennessee 48,000 Texas 165,300 Utah 12,000 Vermont 1,300 Virginia 84,000 Washington 60,000 West Virginia 9,300 Wisconsin 87,000 Wyoming 9,300 (Source: WEFA) GLOBAL CLIMATE COALITION • 1275 K St. NW • Suite 890 • Washington, DC 20005 • Press Office (202) 628-3622 cumm E WATCH a/Er PAGE 3 DEVELOPING COUNTRY COMMITMENTS SEEN UNLIKELY Analysts of the Kyoto Protocol have discovered a legal loophole that will keep developing nations out of the binding emissions reductions regime at least until the treaty has already gone into effect, according to a report in Inside EPA (February 20, 1998). The only way for developing countries to assume binding emissions reductions is to be incorporated into the list of countries in the "Annex B" section of the protocol. Such a move would require that an amendment to the protocol be passed at a future "conference of the parties." Yet the treaty cannot be amended until it is ratified by at least 55 countries, including the developed industrialized countries representing 55 percent of the total carbon dioxide emissions. This means that the United States would have to agree to the flawed treaty first, giving up its negotiating leverage, in the hopes of changing the treaty at some future point, the analysts conclude. WORLD METEOROLOGISTS STRESS NEED FOR BETTER SCIENCE Predictions about the impact of greenhouse gas emissions on global warming will remain "seriously flawed" until more is known about the global sources of these emissions and their natural "sinks," according to a new report by the World Meteorological Organization, based in Geneva, Switzerland. One of the most significant knowledge gaps, the organization says, is a lack of understanding of the distribution and dynamics of agriculture and forestry in both producing and absorbing such gases as carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide and methane. While there are standard methods for measuring carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels, there is no such methodology for calculating the major emissions produced by world agriculture and forestry. OCEANS MAY PLAY PREVIOUSLY UNFORESEEN ROLE IN REMOVING CO2 FROM ATMOSPHERE In another report, published in the February 5 issue of Nature, researchers at the University of Washington found that large amounts of dissolved organic matter in the oceans, once thought to be inert, may in fact be playing a significant role in mitigating the greenhouse effect. The research, funded by the National Science Foundation, analyzed dissolved organic polymers in filtered sea water from Puget Sound, the Arctic Ocean and North Pacific Ocean. Bioengineering professor Pedro Verdugo, co-author of the report, commented: "Our research raises the possibility that dissolved organic matter in the oceans might be playing an unforeseen role in removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere." CLIMA1 E WATCH /17RIEF PAGE 4 KYOTO TREATY THREATENS U.S. SECURITY INTERESTS, SAY EXPERTS A group of leading foreign policy and national security experts -- including three former secretaries of defense and two former secretaries of state -- declared in a statement issued January 26 that the Kyoto climate agreement "threatens American security interests in the world and undermines the sovereign powers of America's elected governments at home." In a letter to President Clinton expressing their concern, the group urged him to reconsider the Administration's commitment to the Kyoto agreement and not to submit it for ratification before ensuring that the treaty is "sciencebased, inclusive, and verifiable." "Specifically, we are concerned about the precedent set at Kyoto by exempting a number of growing economies like China, Mexico and Indonesia from the restrictions of the treaty. By staking out one position, and then preemptively conceding these very points, the United States sends a signal to the rest of the world that will restrict our future negotiating strategies," the group wrote. "If global warming is in fact a problem, these concessions make matters worse by sanctioning continued burning of rain forest and by forcing relocation of energy-intensive industries from the United States, which at least has among the strictest air quality rules in the world, to emerging economies, which have virtually no air quality protections at all. "TRUST BUT VERIFY" "By delaying consideration of the verification protocols of the treaty" the letter continues, "the position of the administration ignores the hard-learned lesson from arms control and other negotiations — trust but verify. "Furthermore, by not establishing a verification protocol, the United States will have to address the growing power of international bureaucracies intent on expanding their role. Even if the United States never ratifies the Kyoto treaty, the diplomatic and in some case legal powers of these organizations will limit the legitimate exercise of US sovereign decision making in the world. This was the pattern, of course, with the non-ratified SALT agreement. "The Kyoto treaty threatens to limit the exercise of American military power. By exempting only US military exercises that are multinational and humanitarian, unilateral military actions — as in Grenada, Panama and Libya — will become politically and diplomatically more difficult." The letter was signed by Richard Burt, former chief arms control negotiator; Jeane Kirkpatrick, former ambassador to the United Nations; Richard Cheney, former secretary of defense; Donald Rice, former secretary of the Air Force; Caspar Weinberger, former secretary of defense; Alexander Haig, former secretary of state; Frank Carlucci, former secretary of defense; Lawrence Eagleberger, former secretary of state; William Brock, former secretary of labor-and former U.S. trade representative; Peter Rodman, director, national security programs, Nixon Center for Peace and Freedom; Malcolm Wallop, former United States senator; Charles Price II, former ambassador to the Kingdom of Belgium and the Court of St. James; Roger W. Robinson Jr., former senior director of international economic affairs at the National Security Council. The group, which will be known as the Committee to Preserve American Security and Sovereignty (COMPASS) plans a public education program on the treaty. 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