----- forwarded message ----- Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 22:18:46 +0200 From: secr <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Fiscal Effects of Warming Studied ----- forwarded message ----- Subject: [gaia-l] Fiscal Effects of Warming Studied Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 15:49:23 -0300 From: Mark Graffis <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Thursday July 12 1:38 PM ET By JOHN HEILPRIN, Associated Press Writer WASHINGTON (AP) - Adopting a new version of the climate treaty that the Bush administration rejected as harmful to the U.S. economy would save the nation more than $50 billion annually in energy-related costs by 2010 as well as slow global warming, a study for an environmental group says. Through a combination of lower fuel and electricity bills due to more efficient appliances, buildings and cars, the United States could more than pay the costs of developing new technology and putting it into place, resulting in savings of $135 billion annually in energy costs by 2020, said the study presented Thursday by the World Wildlife Fund. By 2010, U.S. households would save an average of $113 each and the nation could cut carbon dioxide emissions to a level about 2.5 percent above that of 1990, the study said. Jennifer Morgan, director of the group's climate change campaign, said the study includes proposals that will be negotiated at an international conference on global warming in Bonn, Germany, this month. The study was done by two Boston think tanks, the Tellus Institute and Stockholm Environment Institute. ``What this basically does is disprove the president's claim and shows rather that the treaty could help the United States meet its energy goals. The U.S. would be much better off in such an agreement,'' Morgan said. ``This study shows that if you're serious about climate change, you can also wean yourself off foreign oil and make your economy more efficient.'' Critics such as Myron Ebell, global warming director for the Competitive Enterprise Institute, dismissed the study's findings. He said a nation relying on the burning of fossil fuels for 80 percent of its energy needs cannot simply turn on a dime. ``They are playing with fantasy assumptions and numbers,'' he said. ``There is a way we could comply with the Kyoto treaty cheaply, and that is to lower our standard of living substantially. Energy is part of our standard of living, it's part of our wealth.'' President Bush, in a June 11 speech on global climate change, described as ``fatally flawed'' the unratified 1997 treaty negotiated in Kyoto, Japan, by the United States and other industrial countries. ``The targets themselves are arbitrary and not based upon science. For America, complying with those mandates would have a negative economic impact with layoffs of workers and price increases for consumers,'' Bush said. The treaty had included mandatory commitments to reduce by 2012 emissions of six gases, including carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels, that many scientists believe heat the atmosphere like a greenhouse and could cause severe climate changes over the next century if not lessened. Bush is proposing a largely voluntary approach. Despite concerns about climate change, carbon dioxide emissions rose 2.7 percent in the United States last year, the biggest increase since the mid-1990s, the Energy Department reported last month. The amount of carbon dioxide released from fossil fuel burning in the United States in 2000 was 16 percent more than in 1990. Transportation, mostly exhaust from motor vehicles, and coal, mostly from power plants, accounted for the majority of those emissions. - On the Net World Wildlife Fund: http://www.worldwildlife.org/climate/climate.cfm Competitive Enterprise Institute: http://www.cei.org/WarmingIndex.asp EPA global warming site: http://www.epa.gov/globalwarming
