[A little overanxious to justify US approaches no?] <http://www.nytimes.com> February 10, 2001 New Report Backs Planting More Trees to Fight Warming By ANDREW C. REVKIN An influential panel of scientists is preparing to endorse two strategies for curtailing global warming that have been major points of contention between the United States and Europe in efforts to complete a climate treaty. In a report scheduled for next month, the panel concludes that by protecting existing forests and planting new ones, countries could blunt warming by sopping up 10 to 20 percent of the heat-trapping carbon dioxide that is expected to be released by smokestacks and tailpipes over the next 50 years. It also says the cost to industrialized countries of a global climate plan could be cut in half if they were allowed to buy and sell credits earned by those that make the deepest reductions in carbon dioxide and other so-called greenhouse gases. The conclusions could bolster the position of the United States when negotiations over details of the treaty resume this summer. But some experts involved in the talks stressed that a scientific analysis of untested climate-control strategies says little about whether such efforts would prove effective. "The big question is whether real programs in the real world will work," said Dr. Daniel A. Lashof, a senior scientist at the Natural Resources Defense Council, a private environmental group. "The devil's in the details." The report was written by a working group within the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a network of hundreds of scientists who advise governments on climate issues under the auspices of the United Nations. The group plans to release it at a meeting in Ghana. A final draft was recently sent to governments for comment, and a copy was given to The New York Times by an American official. The panel's findings are closely watched by governments as a barometer of mainstream scientific thinking on global warming. A report by another working group last month concluded that the burning of fossil fuels and other human activities are responsible for most of a one-degree rise in average global temperatures measured in the last 50 years. This was the first time the 12-year-old panel found that human actions were the dominant force behind the recent warming. The climate treaty, the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, would require 38 industrial countries to cut emissions of greenhouse gases by 2012 to 5 percent below emission levels in 1990. It has been signed by more than 100 countries but lacks fine print and has not yet been ratified. Negotiations over details broke down at a tumultuous meeting in November in The Hague when the European Union rejected an American proposal calling for trading in credits for emissions reductions and granting credit for planting forests and crops. The report lends some new credence to the American positions. According to the panel, "Forests, agricultural lands and other terrestrial ecosystems offer significant, if often temporary, mitigation potential." Even if the carbon taken from atmospheric carbon dioxide is eventually released again from plants or soil, the report said, "conservation and sequestration allow time for other options to be further developed and implemented." The scientists added that if the rules for such living carbon reservoirs were right, they could also preserve endangered species and improve water quality. The European Union and some private environmental groups have opposed giving credit for forest planting, saying it could take the pressure off industrial countries to cut emissions from the source: vehicles, power plants and industry. In The Hague, the United States scaled back the amount of credit it sought for farm and forest changes, but American negotiators and many representatives in Congress say this remains an essential component of the final Kyoto treaty. Trading of emissions credits is equally contentious. Such trading is a way of encouraging the greatest cuts in pollution where they can be done most cheaply. In theory, under such a program the United States or another wealthy country — either directly or indirectly — could get credit toward greenhouse-gas targets by investing in new, efficient power plants in, say, Eastern Europe. The new plants would represent a big leap in performance over old, pollution-belching plants there, proponents of trading say. Building similar plants in the United States would cost more and would result in a smaller improvement in emissions. According to the new report, a variety of economic models predict that a climate plan without trading among industrialized countries would result in a range of losses to their gross domestic products of anywhere from two-tenths of 1 percent to 2.2 percent. Under a climate plan with emissions trading, the range of losses could be cut in half. Over all, the report says, even in the middle of this range of possible losses, costs of adjusting power plants and other sources of greenhouse emissions would be small enough that no substantial economic harm would result. On one point, the scientific panel, some environmental groups and some industry officials all agree: To make emissions trading work, there must be clear, enforced rules and an accurate way of measuring changes in gas emissions. "If you don't have a system that's legitimate and verifiable, there's tremendous potential for gaming the system," said Dale E. Heydlauff, senior vice president for environmental affairs of American Electric Power, a $12-billion-a-year energy company that supports trading under the climate treaty. But some environmental groups insist that there is a moral obligation for countries to make a significant amount of their emissions reductions at home. "From the European perspective, we think that should be a priority," said Frances MacGuire, the climate change policy director in the London office of Friends of the Earth. "There is a place for trading, but it shouldn't be without limit."
