Speeches
EU/US COOPERATION ON THE ISSUE OF CLIMATE CHANGE AND THE FUTURE FOR ALTERNATIVE FORMS OF ENERGY
Ambassador John Bruton
Head of the Delegation of the European Commission to the United States
Ohio State University
31 August 2006
Every gallon of gasoline contains 7 lbs. of carbon which, when you burn it,
converts into 20 lbs. of carbon dioxide. Every time you consume a gallon of
gasoline you put 20 lbs. of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. The US National
Academy of Sciences says that carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere
have increased from 280 parts per million in 1750 to 375 parts per million today
– "higher than any previous levels that can be reliably measured," it said.
Full and conclusive science may not yet be available on what the causes are, but
climate change is happening today and is not “just” an issue we have to face in
the next century. Over the past century, global temperature has risen by 0.6 °C.
Ice in the Arctic is melting, 7 % of it in the past 30 years.
There may not yet be totally provable scientific links between climate change
and natural disasters such as Hurricane Katrina, but the steady warming up of
oceans including the Gulf of Mexico, certainly plays a role in the intensity of
hurricanes. The National Academy of Sciences says that "increasing temperatures
are likely to increase the frequency and severity of weather events such as heat
waves and heavy rainfall." Together with many Academies around the world, the
National Academy of Sciences has concluded
that the cause of climate change is likely to be the emissions from
greenhouse
gases from human activities.
The National Academy of Sciences says the Earth is hotter now than it has been for at least 400 years and
maybe even hotter than it has ever been for as many as 2,000 years. According to
NASA [US National Aeronautics & Space Administration), 2005 was the Earth's warmest year in a century, with the 3 preceding
years not far behind. Our release of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases
into the atmosphere has contributed greatly to the alarming rise in temperature.
The great threat of climate change lies in the potential destabilization of the
massive ice sheets around the North and South Poles.
While average temperatures in the US as a whole have risen by approximately 1º
Fahrenheit over the past century, average temperatures in Alaska – the area
nearest to the North Pole - have risen by between 4 and 7 degrees in the past 50
years. That is very worrying.
A rise in sea level due to melting polar ice necessarily would begin slowly.
Massive ice sheets must first be softened and weakened before rapid
disintegration would occur. But when the polar ice does eventually disintegrate,
huge volumes of ice would slip into the ocean, melting and raising the sea level
quite quickly. That event may not be far off. The volume of icebergs from
Greenland has doubled in the last 10 years. Seismic stations reveal that the
number of ice quakes registering 4.6 or greater on the Richter scale has doubled
in the past 10 years.
Apart from CO2, another great generator of the greenhouse effect is methane.
While one can reduce human sources of methane emissions, at coal mines,
landfills and the like, it would be very difficult to control the release into
the atmosphere of frozen methane hydrates which are now safely sequestered in
the ice of the Polar ice caps. One could envision a self reinforcing and
dangerous chain reaction here, with the melting of ice leading to further global
warming.
These facts have global consequences and potentially very devastating ones: Were
global temperatures to rise by 5 degrees, the level of the sea would be 80 ft.
higher than it is today. This would put Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Miami
and Washington, DC, under water within the lifetimes of our grandchildren or
great grandchildren. In Ohio, wildlife would suffer tremendously. High water
temperatures in lakes and streams would degrade the quality of sources of
domestic water.
The EU recognized this risk as early as 1990, when we committed ourselves to
stabilizing EU emissions of carbon dioxide at the 1990 level by the year 2000.
We succeeded in stabilizing emissions and, through our commitments under the
Kyoto Protocol, we have set ourselves even more ambitious goals as we strive to
reduce emissions in absolute terms. The EU, which today accounts for 14% of the
world's greenhouse gas emissions, will have reduced that figure to around 8% by
2050. Today, we are around 3 percentage points below 1990 levels, whereas the
US emissions have risen by more than 30% since 1990 and, according to the US
Department of Energy, US emissions are expected to rise even much further over
the next decades!
Since 2000, the EU has launched over 30 initiatives to address climate change
including R & D on energy efficiency and alternative
renewable energy sources
such as bio-fuels, wind power, sun, water and even waste. Our efforts range from
getting factories and power plants to reduce their emissions to addressing what
we as individuals can do to make a difference in our daily lives. In May this
year, the European Commission launched a new
awareness campaign, which helps citizens with
a wealth of practical and easy-to-do tips to make small changes to their daily
routine in order to achieve collectively significant reductions of greenhouse
gas emissions. We have demonstrated that proactive climate policies produce
results, and do not necessarily endanger economic growth. Danger to economic
growth was one of the – in our view, incorrect - arguments the Bush
Administration advanced for not ratifying Kyoto Protocol.
Lack of action on climate change will have costs for economic growth too. The UN
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has estimated that a rise in global
temperature of “only” 2.5 °C would cost 1.5 to 2% of global GDP. A study from
Cambridge University indicates that costs to the economy may be around 95
trillion US Dollars. Direct economic costs of global warming include extreme
weather events, increased water stress, public health problems, higher insurance premia, desertification of currently fertile soil, migration of parts of the
population and lower agricultural yields.
According to a Colorado study by scientists at the US Department of
Agriculture’s Agricultural Research Service (ARS), continued elevated carbon
dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere may reduce forage quality in the
world's grasslands and lead to a reduction in weight gain among animals.
We must also be wary of over-simplified solutions.
Suppose we were to try to replace all the gasoline needed in US motor cars with
corn-based ethanol. What extra agricultural acreage would that require? I have
seen one estimate suggesting that it would require twice the entire agricultural
acreage of the United States to grow enough corn to produce enough ethanol to
fuel all of America's motor cars each year! In the meantime what would Americans
do for food?
Using sugar cane-based ethanol, which is a more efficient source of ethanol than
corn but cannot be grown everywhere, would require more than a third of the
entire cultivated land in the world, or nearly all the agricultural land in the
tropics, if it were to meet world demand for transportation fuel.
Greenhouse gases would also be generated in fertilizing, harvesting and
transporting energy crops.
I appreciate the efforts which are being made at state level, including here in
Ohio.
In February 2006, Ohio State legislators announced a commitment to address
climate change and clean energy together with legislators from Illinois, Iowa,
Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin. They will introduce legislation to promote
renewable energy, energy efficiency, lower vehicle emissions and greenhouse gas
registries. The legislators are also working to encourage coal gasification and
carbon sequestration, a key issue for Midwestern States which rely heavily on
coal-fired power generation.
As someone who grew up on a farm in Ireland, I am also impressed with the
initiatives Bill Richards has taken at his family farm, which I saw today. He is
planting corn and soybeans without tilling the soil. This means that he spends
less time planting the fields, releases less carbon from the soil, requires
fewer and smaller tractors and less fuel and improves yields. Bill Richards
shows what sustainable development means in practice.
Over the past 5 years, the US Administration has set aside impressive amounts
of money for research and development on the causes of climate change and
alternative forms of energy. But it continues to stress that new technology and
energy efficiency are the key instruments to tackle climate change. The EU fully
agrees that technological development is crucial, but we would point out that
-
even with major government support for R & D, technologies
will not be developed at all, or will be developed too slowly, unless there
are concrete signals from government on (future) regulatory action to mandate
their adoption;
-
it may take 40 to 50 years before some of the technologies are
available for commercial use;
-
and, very importantly, the effect of measures on the climate
change may take 100 years because of the slow reactions by the climate system.
The EU says that we need to do more than focus on supply-side technologies. We
must develop demand-side policies. There is a place for government regulation,
just as there is a place for market-based incentives and disincentives. CAFE
[Corporate Average Fuel Efficiency] standards are a very good example of government regulations that got results,
and got them quickly.
Only if the EU and the US lead by example at home can we demand developing
countries to make sacrifices to tackle climate change.
I hope that the agreement at the Vienna
EU-US Summit in June 2006, to launch a
High Level Dialogue on Climate, Energy and Sustainable Development, will allow
the US and the EU to put their great resources together and to find an answer
to this great challenge for mankind.
"On An
Ohio Farm, Seeking Solutions to Global Warming," John Bruton,
Cleveland Plain Dealer, Thursday, August 31, 2006
