The Political Climate: an ongoing commentary on the NH Primary and Climate Change

The Bush administration’s, “Climate Change Technology Program Strategic Plan” was released yesterday.  This article in the Washington Post supplies a synopsis of the “strategic plan,” as well as responses to the 244-page vision from the White House.  Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman said that the plan “breaks new ground with its visionary 100-year planning horizon, global perspective, multilateral reserach collaberations, and public-private partnerships.”  The document’s long-term plan budgets $3 billion a year in efforts to utilize technologies to curb the impacts of global warming, encourage voluntary actions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and employ national research intiatives to seek solutions.  “It’s good as far as it goes, but it needs to go a lot further,” responded Republican Sherwood Boechlert, the House Science Committee Chairman.

Will $3 billion a year be enough?  Two weeks ago (Sept. 11th “Monday Recap“) TPC reviewed this article from the Washington Post that reported on a study by Reuel Shinnar and Francesco Citro, two chemical engineers at the Clean Fuels Institute at the City College of New York.  Shinnar and Citro published a paper estimating it would take the US $200 billion a year for the next 30 years to address climate change–”spending $200 billion a year for the next 30 years would be a hard sell to policymakers, but [Shinnar] argued that it’s worth it in light of how climate change is transforming Earth.”

 This “strategic plan,” budgeting $197 billion less per year, must be heavily relying on voluntary action, which to date has been the only action against climate change the US has seen.  However, current data shows that voluntary action isn’t likely going to cut it.  The NY Times ran this article today reporting on upcoming forums that Ceres, Marsh & McLennan, and Yale University will host this winter.  The article provides results from the Carbon Disclosure Project, a report detailing corporate response to global warming.  The project shows that more than 80 percent of the companies involved in the study “acknowledged the potential risks and benefits of climate change.  But fewer than half said they were working to reduce emissions or the greenhouse gases that cause global warming.”  Hopefully actions, such as the sustainable governance forums that Ceres, Yale, and Marsh will hold for 200 directors of Fortune 1000 companies will change some of these results.