NEWS

US candidates compete on climate

05/21/2007

By Edward Luce

Financial Times

It is not often that record high petrol prices prove helpful to American politicians. But with prices now riding at more than $3 a gallon in many parts of the country, voters are listening ever more attentively to how their 2008 presidential contenders will tackle global warming.

Those plans grow more ambitious by the week - and they are not confined to the Democratic field of White House aspirants. Unlike President George W. Bush, who first conceded the possibility of "man-made" climate change only last January, all the leading Republican candidates have publicly accepted the scientific consensus that it is occurring.

But although John McCain is the co-sponsor of a far-reaching bill to cut carbon emissions, the frontrunner Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney have yet to produce specific plans on how they would tackle the problem. Neither has mentioned "global warming" or "climate change" on his website.

Among the Democratic candidates, however, there is intensifying competition to be the most radical global warming candidate. Almost all have signed up to targets of reducing America's carbon emissions by between 60 and 80 per cent by 2050 - in line with what Arnold Schwarzenegger, the governor of California, and his colleagues in the western and north-eastern states have proclaimed.

Some, such as Bill Richardson, the governor of New Mexico and former energy secretary in the Clinton administration, who is running fourth in the Democratic stakes behind Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards, argue that those targets are not urgent enough.

"When John F. Kennedy challenged this country to reach the moon, he challenged us to get there in 10 years, not 20 or 30 or 40," he told the New America Foundation think-tank in Washington last week. "I am going to stake my claim to being the next president - the energy president - on the concept of a fast, comprehensive energy revolution."

Such is the flurry of policy initiatives that even energy experts have difficulty keeping up with what the presidential contenders are offering. Many leading executives in the private sector, which has signed up to the global warming agenda with a vengeance in the last few months, remain focused on the possibility that the US Congress will legislate a radical climate change agenda before the next president takes office.

There are seven bills pending in Congress and Nancy Pelosi, speaker of the House of Representatives, has promised an action plan to create a European-style "cap and trade" carbon emissions market by July 4.

But not everybody is impressed by what the presidential aspirants are offering. Except for Chris Dodd, the Democratic senator from Connecticut, who is running fifth in the poll rankings, none of the candidates has embraced a carbon tax or a new petrol tax, even though most economists say this would be more efficient at reducing emissions.

Nor have many candidates yet called for a new treaty to replace the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which the US refused to sign. "Kyoto is a no-no word," Fredrik Reinfeldt, the prime minister of Sweden, told the FT last week on a visit to the US to talk to his counterparts about global warming. "The US views itself as a world leader and Kyoto was someone else telling them what to do."

Some of the candidates have also signalled a confusion between the goal of confronting global warming and that of "ending America's addiction to foreign oil" - a related but sometimes clashing objective that plays into the public's fears over national security.

For example, Mr McCain has been attacked for converting to the merits of corn ethanol although it could exacerbate America's carbon emissions. Barack Obama, who last week unveiled a plan to improve the fuel efficiency of US cars, has also sung the praises of ethanol - as have John Edwards and Hillary Clinton. The fact that the mid-western state of Iowa, which is at the heart of the US corn lobby, holds the first presidential caucus next January might have something to do with corn ethanol's popularity.

However, most observers highlight how rapidly America's conversation has changed. "Who would have guessed a year ago that global warming would be one of the key issues for the next presidential election?" said Peter Goldmark, a director at Environmental Defense, an advocacy group. "The climate has changed beyond recognition."