President Clinton today unveiled his much-anticipated plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to slow global warming, including US$5 billion in tax incentives and spending for research on more energy-efficient technologies.
The White House hopes to implement these new technologies in everyday life beginning around 2004, with the ultimate aim of reducing emissions to 1990 levels by between 2008 and 2012. Within five years after that, the administration's goal is to reduce emissions below 1990 levels.
"If we do not change our course now, the consequences will be disastrous for Americans and for the world," Clinton said in an event with Vice President Al Gore and Cabinet members at the National Geographic Society. "We cannot wait until the treaty is negotiated and ratified to act. We must begin now to take out our insurance policy on the future."
In the plan's first phase, the government will look at the most energy-wasting industries, such as electricity and automobiles, and develop more energy-saving technologies, such as cleaner fuel cells for cars. The administration also plans to deregulate the electric industry, saying that the system is inefficient. About two-thirds of energy used to produce electricity is wasted.
Companies that reduced greenhouse gases quickly would be rewarded with credits they could trade to other companies or countries. A model for the plan is the emissions trading to reduce sulfur dioxide emissions, which cause acid rain.
Most scientists agree that global warming is a reality, and a chief reason for higher temperatures and increasingly disruptive weather patterns is the amount of fossil fuels like coal and oil that humans are burning. If current trends continue, they warn, within 100 years we will reach temperatures not seen on this planet in 50 million years.
Clinton said that consumer awareness is key to getting people to conserve energy in a country that produces a quarter of the world's greenhouse gases.
"The revolution in the lighting industry alone is amazing," Clinton said, adding that the use of energy-efficient products could shrink US electric bills by $100 billion over the next five years.
Clinton will present his plan at an international conference on climate change in Kyoto, Japan, in December. The plan will likely draw some fire in Kyoto because it requires developing countries to pitch in to lower their emissions as well. Clinton said he would include $1 billion in assistance from USAID to help developing countries reach their targets. And, with the loose US target date of between 2008 and 2012, Clinton will likely be criticized by the European Union, which is pushing for a strict 2010 deadline, and possibly a date closer to 2005.
Environmental groups and businesses called the administration's plan a fairly reasonable approach to the difficult issue of convincing a country with cheap energy and a love affair with automobiles to clean up its act. However, whether Congress will approve the $5 billion plan remains to be seen.
"This plan is what we had advocated from the beginning - clear, modest steps to get us back to 1990 levels," said Michael Marvin, executive director of the Business Council for Sustainable Energy, which advocates the use of wind, solar, and other alternative energy sources.
