`Climate change a serious issue'

K. PICHUMANI

Interview with James Connaughton, Chairman, U.S. Council on Environmental Quality.

"I am a dedicated environmental optimist and an eco-realist." This is how James L. Connaughton, Chairman of the United States Administaration's Council on Environmental Quality, describes himself. "The link between awareness such as your magazine provides and the understanding of the need for such an action propels us as human beings to restore [the environment] and exercise better stewardship," he said in an interview to Frontline in Chennai on August 23. During President George W. Bush's first term, Connaughton coordinated the development of major U.S. government initiatives such as the national clean air strategy, the forests' restoration legislation, the new wetlands restoration initiative, the clean-up and re-development of abandoned industrial sites and the comprehensive climate change strategy. Excerpts from the interview:

The climate across the world is changing. The temperature shot up to 40oC in New York and it snowed in Johannesburg. Are these bizarre changes related to greenhouse gas emissions?

We know that global surface temperatures, on an average, are rising. Scientists are working on various causes for that temperature trend. There seems to be a general agreement that humans are importantly responsible for the rise in greenhouse gases that contribute to the warming trend and they are studying aggressively the extent to which these gases are factor, and the negative as well as the potentially positive consequences of such a trend.

We need to be careful about attributing a single episode, whether it is positive or negative, in terms of the present weather, to the longer premises associated with global warming. It is a serious issue. The U.S. government, since President Bush has been in office, has spent more than $10 billion on climate change science alone and another $17 billion on technologies to reduce greenhouse gases.

Can you give us a sense of the climate change strategy in the U.S.? Is there a concrete strategy to arrest the change in the climate?

In the summer of 2001, President Bush gave a major policy address, describing the seriousness of the climate change issue and how he would approach it. He established a Cabinet-level committee that developed a broad series of policies that the President announced in February 2002. It began with a commitment to reduce the greenhouse gas intensity of the U.S. economy by 18 per cent by 2012. He then outlined several dozen policy initiatives, which included new mandatory programmes to cut greenhouse gases, a large number of new incentives and a series of new public-private partnerships with industry and other groups to make specific, viable reductions in greenhouse gases.

An example of the mandatory programme is the new fuel economy standards that apply to light trucks and large passenger vehicles. That calls for 15 per cent improvement in fuel economy across the entire fleet. An example of the incentives is Congress passing a new energy law last year that provides more than $10 billion in tax credits for renewable energy systems and highly fuel-efficient vehicles. In terms of partnerships, at the national level we have 15 per cent of our major sectors, each taking specific commitments to reduce greenhouse gases.

We are working internationally, for example, to capture methane from coal mines, landfills and agricultural operations, and producing clean, low-emitting energy at substantial profit. That programme aims at cutting greenhouse gases by 15 million tonnes by 2015. That is one-tenth of what the Kyoto Protocol has achieved, if countries are meeting their targets.

The U.S. has been seen as a spoilsport on several important international initiatives. It was a signatory to the Kyoto Protocol, but the U.S. Senate did not ratify it. The Senate did not ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) also. The U.S. pulled out of one of the START [Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty] agreements. Why did the U.S. pull out of these international agreements. Was it because of its selfish interests?

The U.S. strongly supports well-designed international treaties and agreements that achieve their goal in a rational way and have a strong likelihood of success. We are strong supporters of several treaties, for example, of eliminating the deadliest chemicals. We are leaders of international treaties on fishing. We led the way in the elimination of ozone-depleting substances. I give you these examples - just a few of the many - where the U.S. is an active leader and a strong supporter of the goals of international engagement. Most notably, bilaterally, the agreement between the U.S. and India to advance zero emission.

It is important to understand that there are times when we assess treaties and make a decision that they [the treaties] are not rational and not achievable. The Kyoto Protocol, as applied to the United States, presents both the problems. The target agreed to by the prior administration was impossible to achieve without causing a loss of nearly five million jobs. At the same time, it would have resulted in simply shifting the greenhouse gases emitted from America to other countries where the greenhouse gases would still be emitted and, therefore, would not have done much in solving the environmental problem. Which is why the prior administration did not send the treaty to its own Senate for ratification. When President Bush came into office, he more directly restated the policy that was already established by the prior government that had signed the treaty and then elected not to send it to the Senate. Nevertheless, we did aggressively move forward to design a strategy that was more rational economically and will produce real and lasting reductions in greenhouse gases.

The reason for this [my] visit is that we have constructed international partnership and agreements that are aimed at significant transfer and application of the cleanest, new technologies to advance economic growth while reducing not only greenhouse gases but also harmful air pollution that plagues so many cities worldwide. The Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate is one example of that. We have the methane partnership. Another example is through the G-8 Plan of Action on Clean Development and Climate. President Bush is working closely with Prime Minister Tony Blair [of the U.K.] to develop it. It is a 40-page comprehensive series of steps that the G-8 countries with five major emerging economies, including India, can take to improve their energy security, to reduce harmful air pollution that affects our cities and human health today, and at the same time make lasting progress on climate change.

What is the new wetland initiative in the U.S.?

The President is a strong conservationist. Because so many of his initiatives are positive and everybody likes them, you cannot hear too much about them. There is no conflict. Wetlands is a good example of it. In March 2003, the President was pleased to announce that the U.S. has finally stopped the overall loss of its wetlands since the settlers first came to America, and turned the corner on restoring the wetlands. At that time, he made a commitment to restore, improve and protect three million acres of wetlands over five years. We have more than 40 federal programmes dedicated to that purpose. For example, we have $40 billion going to our farmers and ranchers over 10 years in new conservation programmes. Several of these will be used to restore and improve wetlands and working farmlands, taking the most valuable ecological parts of those lands out of production.

Out of production?

Out of production while continuing production on the parts that are best-performing.

Did not the farmers object?

The farmers no longer object. They are now delighted that they are able to transition part of their land into a more vibrant land that provides nicer access to rivers and streams. It is now a place of recreation for fishing, bird-watching and hunting, and farmers can charge licence-fees for these activities.

We have another programme called the North American Wetlands Conservation Act. That has already restored and protected more than five million acres of wetlands in the last decade, which helped to turn the corner in the overall gain in the wetlands. That is a programme in which the federal government puts in a dollar and conservation groups and other organisations match it anywhere from three to ten times. For a dollar of federal spending, we get three to ten dollars of private spending to go out for the best opportunities to restore wetlands on a large-scale. Duck-hunters are particularly active.

James Lovelock, eminent environmental scientist, says that we have no time to experiment with newfangled technologies. Do you agree with his view that only nuclear power can halt global warming?

You are not seriously dedicated to energy security, air pollution control and climate change unless you are seriously dedicated to a dramatic expansion in the use of zero emission nuclear power. That is one of a broad portfolio of technologies that will be necessary to provide the foundation for a more sustainable energy future.

The others include renewable fuels, and technologies that make coal-fired energy zero emission. We are working aggressively on all of these because we still need coal at least for the next several decades to help people out of poverty and foster economic growth.

A joint meeting of Indo-U.S. coal technologists concluded that U.S. technology would not suit Indian coal for gasification...

There are four important steps to make the use of coal more sustainable. One is more effective, efficient and high-performing coal mining, with reclamation to restore the land to its original state. The second is to make the current generation of coal-fired power plants more efficient. For several plants you make more efficient, you don't have to build a new one. Three, we must move forward rapidly on the current high-tech approaches to cut air pollution from all coal-fired power plants and install the best technologies in constructing new coal-fired power plants. The fourth is to rapidly move forward with half-a-dozen different approaches being explored for capturing carbon-dioxide emission from coal and storing them deep underground for putting them to productive use as a product instead of releasing it into the atmosphere.

India has just joined the FutureGen [alliance], which is dedicated to solving the carbon-dioxide capture issue from coal. That was an important development because as you said, India has a different coal content from that of the U.S. or other countries. So we need to experiment with the kind of coal India is using and make sure that these technological advancements are applicable to India as they are to the United States, China and Eastern Europe.

The Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate is interested in hydrogen economy. How far are we away from hydrogen economy? India is going to build a Compact High Temperature Reactor (CHTR), which will generate not only electricity but hydrogen.

First, we already know how to produce a lot of hydrogen. The challenge is in how to make effective use of that hydrogen in energy systems such as small industrial parks, homes, consumer goods and transportation. There is a worldwide effort to systematically accelerate the time that hydrogen will be available for these applications on a commercial scale. That is, through the International Partnership for Hydrogen Economy. The U.S. is committing $1.7 billion over five years to this effort alone and that amount of money is being matched in substantial measure by Asian and European companies and the private sector. There is an extremely high level of interest in making this transition to this energy-delivery source. The advantage is in its zero emission. Its only emission is water vapour and its main source is water.

You asked what the prospects are for hydrogen economy. The President has directed his administration to work towards a goal of achieving commercialisation [of hydrogen] in this generation. In his State of the Union address in 2003, the President used the expression that a child born today could drive hydrogen-powered vehicles. I have personally driven several [of them]. So the technology exists. It is in use. It is currently very expensive. Issues of reliability must be examined for wide-scale use. But we are not working on some future dream. We are working on a present reality, on a technology that can be used for this purpose. The world should work together on this because that excites private markets. If they are building a technology for all major countries in the world rather than for one country, it increases the incentive to invest and innovate with the technology.

You deal with environment and energy. Do you believe that we have damaged the environment so badly that we cannot recover from it? Or is there cause for optimism?

I am a dedicated environmental optimist and an eco-realist. What that means is that as soon as we are able to identify a problem, there are people rolling up their sleeves and working to correct it. So the link between awareness such as your magazine provides and the understanding of the need for action propels us as human beings to restore [the environment] and exercise better stewardship. Environmental degradation typically comes from poverty and a lack of understanding of its impact on the local world and the world at large.

I am an optimist because as I sit here today the air pollution in America has been cut by half while we tripled our economy. As I sit here, we no longer have significant issues of hazardous waste in America. We have well-managed landfills. We have strict rules. All our water systems are recovering at a rapid rate, faster than anyone thought possible 20 years ago. So we know from experience that we can fix these problems. We just need to design rational policies that enable us to grow our economies so that we can pay for these solutions at a faster rate. There is a direct connection between the rate of environmental progress and the rate of economic growth. One should be highly determined to address environmental problems.

What is the role of the U.S. in the Asia-Pacific Partnership for Clean Development and Climate for reducing greenhouse gas emissions?

Each of the countries is leading different working groups in equal partnership with their private sectors, which makes it a different and exciting partnership. We have CEOs of leading companies of the world [taking part in the partnership]. The U.S.' role is in equal measure as the other five countries [India, Australia, China, Japan and South Korea]. We are designing strategies that are relevant to all our countries, which represent more than 50 per cent of the world's population, of the world's fossil energy use and of the world's economy.