Energy Scandals and Climate Tragedies

By Michel Gelobter, AlterNet. Posted June 24, 2002.

The controversy over the recent release of the 2002 Climate Action Report by the Environmental Protection Agency is just the latest in a series of environmental controversies to hit the Bush Administration.

Before people were left to try solving the riddle of President Bush's actual climate change position, they witnessed a series of energy-related scandals that dogged Washington. Whether it was Enron, the California energy crisis, or the deliberations into the Bush-Cheney Energy Plan, troubling signals emanate from the White House with disturbing frequency.

Take, for example, the release of documents tying Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham to meetings with donors, whose campaign contributions to both parties since 1999 topped $29 million. The payoff from those meetings was almost a thousandfold: legislation embodying $27 billion in subsidies.

Believe it or not, this rich harvest is dwarfed by a decision the Bush Administration has already implemented: the U.S. withdrawal from the Kyoto Protocol on Climate Change. Had the U.S. respected our commitment to action on this critical issue, recent studies, including our own, have shown that the net cost to American fossil fuel industries could have been more than $45 billion a year. By contrast, estimates of the benefits of good climate policy to the economy as a whole range as high as $120 billion a year by 2020. While our economy took the hit, the energy industry walked away from the President's policy with its biggest payday ever.

So while the fossil fuel industry cashes in on our climate reversal, who pays? First, the vast majority of American businesses. If the U.S. adopted a policy to internalize the climate-related costs of energy use, it would spawn a vast "double dividend." Redirected investments would spur employment and send new investments where they belong, in companies fueled by workers and innovation instead of dependence on foreign oil.

Furthermore, the reversal of American climate policy devalues other industry groups relative to fossil fuel. Because fossil fuel use is subsidized by bad climate policy, we use more of it than we should. Energy industries artificially appear to be better investments than they really are and attract capital investment that could be used more productively in the rest of the economy.

A second victim of the energy industry's climate subsidy is our national security. Adopting the Kyoto Protocol could reduce by 2020 our dependence on oil by over 25%. There may not be a linear relationship between this number and the geo-political risks created by our dependence on oil-producing states, but we sorely need the flexibility that independence would allow.

Because global warming is, after all, global, its effects threaten our security in the long-run as well. The U.S., which represents 4% of the world population, emits 25% of the carbon dioxide from fossil fuel, and we are historically responsible for over 35% of greenhouse gasses presently trapped in the atmosphere. As the impacts of our emissions become more clear with time, our reputation may grow from pariah on climate policy to responsible party for the natural disasters that climate change will entrain. Barring rapid action on our part, events like the submersion of 57% of Bangladesh in 1998 or last month's rapid breakup of Antarctic ice may increasingly be linked to American energy policy, whether or not these events are directly connected to climate change.

Global warming is happening right here, right now, and there is no shortage of impacts on our own people. The elderly trapped in unprecedented urban heat waves, America's arctic populations facing dwindling fish catches, and farmers in the South and Southwest dependent on an increasingly volatile climate are all paying the price of our delay and inaction. All told, the United Nations Environment Program calculates the worldwide cost of inaction at $300 billion per year, as coastal property disappears, buildings are damaged, and species' habitats are irrevocably altered. These are costs we will now pass on to our children, our children's children, and the world for generations to come. The President's reversal on climate is the gift to the fossil fuel industry that keeps on taking from the rest of us.

It is a testament to our democracy that, despite their millions in contributions, the energy industry still faces significant legal and political hurdles to getting their way on many other fronts. With its inaction on climate change the Bush administration has scored a windfall for an industry with enormous clout. Unfortunately, it has also laid the groundwork for a human and environmental tragedy of unprecedented proportion.

Michel Gelobter is the Executive Director of Redefining Progress, an Oakland, Calif.-based nonprofit that works to ensure a more sustainable and socially equitable world.

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