For Immediate Release
Office of the Press Secretary
February 14, 2002
President Announces Clear Skies & Global Climate Change Initiatives
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
Silver Spring, Maryland
Fact Sheet Clear Skies Policy Book Global Climate Change Policy Book
2:05 P.M. EST
THE PRESIDENT: Thank you very much for that warm
welcome. It's an honor to join you all today to talk about
our environment and about the prospect of dramatic progress to improve
it.
Today, I'm announcing a new environmental approach that will clean
our skies, bring greater health to our citizens and encourage
environmentally responsible development in America and around the
world.
Particularly, it's an honor to address this topic at NOAA, whose
research is providing us with the answers to critical questions about
our environment. And so I want to thank Connie for his
hospitality and I want to thank you for yours, as
well. Connie said he felt kind of like Sasha Cohen -- I
thought for a minute he was going to ask me to talk to his mother on
his cell phone. (Laughter.)
I also want to tell you one of my favorite moments was to go down
to Crawford and turn on my NOAA radio to get the
weather. (Applause.) I don't know whether my guy
is a computer or a person. (Laughter.) But the
forecast is always accurate, and I appreciate that. I also
want to thank you for your hard work, on behalf of the American
people.
I appreciate my friend, Don Evans's leadership. I've
known him for a long time. You're working for a good fellow,
if you're working at the Commerce Department, or at
NOAA. And I want to thank Spence Abraham and Christie Todd
Whitman for their service to the country, as well. I've
assembled a fabulous Cabinet, people who love their country and work
hard. And these are three of some of the finest Cabinet officials I've
got. (Applause.)
I want to thank Jim Connaughton, who is the Chairman of the Council
on Environmental Quality. He's done a fabulous job of
putting this policy together, a policy that I'm about to
explain. But before I do, I also want to thank some members
of Congress who have worked with us on this initiative. I
want to thank Bob Smith and George Voinovich, two United States
senators, for their leadership in pursuing multi-pollutant legislation;
as well as Congressmen Billy Tauzin and Joe Barton. And I
want to thank Senator Chuck Hagel and Larry Craig for their work on
climate issues. These members of Congress have had an impact
on the policies I am just about to announce.
America and the world share this common goal: we must
foster economic growth in ways that protect our
environment. We must encourage growth that will provide a
better life for citizens, while protecting the land, the water, and the
air that sustain life.
In pursuit of this goal, my government has set two
priorities: we must clean our air, and we must address the
issue of global climate change. We must also act in a serious and
responsible way, given the scientific uncertainties. While
these uncertainties remain, we can begin now to address the human
factors that contribute to climate change. Wise action now
is an insurance policy against future risks.
I have been working with my Cabinet to meet these challenges with
forward and creative thinking. I said, if need be, let's
challenge the status quo. But let's always remember, let's
do what is in the interest of the American people.
Today, I'm confident that the environmental path that I announce
will benefit the entire world. This new approach is based on
this common-sense idea: that economic growth is key to
environmental progress, because it is growth that provides the
resources for investment in clean technologies.
This new approach will harness the power of markets, the creativity
of entrepreneurs, and draw upon the best scientific
research. And it will make possible a new partnership with
the developing world to meet our common environmental and economic
goals.
We will apply this approach first to the challenge of cleaning the
air that Americans breathe. Today, I call for new Clean
Skies legislation that sets tough new standards to dramatically reduce
the three most significant forms of pollution from power plants, sulfur
dioxide, nitrogen oxides and mercury.
We will cut sulfur dioxide emissions by 73 percent from current
levels. We will cut nitrogen oxide emissions by 67
percent. And, for the first time ever, we will cap emissions
of mercury, cutting them by 69 percent. These cuts will be
completed over two measured phases, with one set of emission limits for
2010 and for the other for 2018.
This legislation will constitute the most significant step America
has ever taken -- has ever taken -- to cut power plant emissions that
contribute to urban smog, acid rain and numerous health problems for
our citizens.
Clean Skies legislation will not only protect our environment, it
will prolong the lives of thousands of Americans with asthma and other
respiratory illnesses, as well as with those with heart
disease. And it will reduce the risk to children exposed to
mercury during a mother's pregnancy.
The Clean Skies legislation will reach our ambitious air quality
goals through a market-based cap-and-trade approach that rewards
innovation, reduces cost and guarantees results. Instead of
the government telling utilities where and how to cut pollution, we
will tell them when and how much to cut. We will give them a
firm deadline and let them find the most innovative ways to meet it.
We will do this by requiring each facility to have a permit for
each ton of pollution it emits. By making the permits
tradeable, this system makes it financially worthwhile for companies to
pollute less, giving them an incentive to make early and cost effective
reductions.
This approach enjoys widespread support, with both Democrats and
Republicans, because we know it works. You see, since 1995
we have used a cap-and-trade program for sulfur dioxide
pollution. It has cut more air pollution, this system has
reduced more air pollution in the last decade than all other programs
under the 1990 Clean Air Act combined. And by even more than
the law required. Compliance has been virtually 100
percent. It takes only a handful of employees to administer
this program. And no one had to enter a courtroom to make
sure the reductions happened.
Because the system gives businesses an incentive to create and
install innovative technologies, these reductions have cost about 80
percent less than expected. It helps to keep energy prices
affordable for our consumers. And we made this progress
during a decade when our economy, and our demand for energy, was
growing.
The Clean Skies legislation I propose is structured on this
approach because it works. It will replace a confusing,
ineffective maze of regulations for power plants that has created an
endless cycle of litigation. Today, hundreds of millions of
dollars are spent on lawyers, rather than on environmental
protection. The result is painfully slow, uncertain and
expensive programs on clean air.
Instead, Clean Skies legislation will put less money into paying
lawyers and regulators, and money directly into programs to reduce
pollution, to meet our national goal. This approach, I'm
absolutely confident, will bring better and faster results in cleaning
up our air.
Now, global climate change presents a different set of challenges
and requires a different strategy. The science is more
complex, the answers are less certain, and the technology is less
developed. So we need a flexible approach that can adjust to
new information and new technology.
I reaffirm America's commitment to the United Nations Framework
Convention and it's central goal, to stabilize atmospheric greenhouse
gas concentrations at a level that will prevent dangerous human
interference with the climate. Our immediate goal is to
reduce America's greenhouse gas emissions relative to the size of our
economy.
My administration is committed to cutting our nation's greenhouse
gas intensity -- how much we emit per unit of economic activity -- by
18 percent over the next 10 years. This will set America on
a path to slow the growth of our greenhouse gas emissions and, as
science justifies, to stop and then reverse the growth of emissions.
This is the common sense way to measure progress. Our
nation must have economic growth -- growth to create opportunity;
growth to create a higher quality of life for our
citizens. Growth is also what pays for investments in clean
technologies, increased conservation, and energy
efficiency. Meeting our commitment to reduce our greenhouse
gas intensity by 18 percent by the year 2012 will prevent over 500
million metric tons of greenhouse gases from going into the atmosphere
over the course of the decade. And that is the equivalent of
taking 70 million cars off the road.
To achieve this goal, our nation must move forward on many fronts,
looking at every sector of our economy. We will challenge
American businesses to further reduce emissions. Already,
agreements with the semiconductor and aluminum industries and others
have dramatically cut emissions of some of the most potent greenhouse
gases. We will build on these successes with new agreements
and greater reductions.
Our government will also move forward immediately to create
world-class standards for measuring and registering emission
reductions. And we will give transferable credits to companies that
can show real emission reductions.
We will promote renewable energy production and clean coal
technology, as well as nuclear power, which produces no greenhouse gas
emissions. And we will work to safely improve fuel economy
for our cars and our trucks.
Overall, my budget devotes $4.5 billion to addressing climate
change -- more than any other nation's commitment in the entire
world. This is an increase of more than $700 million over
last year's budget. Our nation will continue to lead the
world in basic climate and science research to address gaps in our
knowledge that are important to decision makers.
When we make decisions, we want to make sure we do so on sound
science; not what sounds good, but what is real. And the
United States leads the world in providing that kind of
research. We'll devote $588 million towards the research and
development of energy conservation technologies. We must and
we will conserve more in the United States. And we will
spend $408 million toward research and development on renewables, on
renewable energy.
This funding includes $150 million for an initiative that Spence
Abraham laid out the other day, $150 million for the Freedom Car
Initiative, which will advance the prospect of breakthrough
zero-emission fuel cell technologies.
My comprehensive energy plan, the first energy plan that any
administration has put out in a long period of time, provides $4.6
billion over the next five years in clean energy tax incentives to
encourage purchases of hybrid and fuel cell vehicles, to promote
residential solar energy, and to reward investments in wind, solar and
biomass energy production. And we will look for ways to
increase the amount of carbon stored by America's farms and forests
through a strong conservation title in the farm bill. I have
asked Secretary Veneman to recommend new targeted incentives for
landowners to increase carbon storage.
By doing all these things, by giving companies incentives to cut
emissions, by diversifying our energy supply to include cleaner fuels,
by increasing conservation, by increasing research and development and
tax incentives for energy efficiency and clean technologies, and by
increasing carbon storage, I am absolutely confident that America will
reach the goal that I have set.
If, however, by 2012, our progress is not sufficient and sound
science justifies further action, the United States will respond with
additional measures that may include broad-based market programs as
well as additional incentives and voluntary measures designed to
accelerate technology development and deployment.
Addressing global climate change will require a sustained effort
over many generations. My approach recognizes that economic
growth is the solution, not the problem. Because a nation
that grows its economy is a nation that can afford investments and new
technologies.
The approach taken under the Kyoto protocol would have required the
United States to make deep and immediate cuts in our economy to meet an
arbitrary target. It would have cost our economy up to $400
billion and we would have lost 4.9 million jobs.
As President of the United States, charged with safeguarding the
welfare of the American people and American workers, I will not commit
our nation to an unsound international treaty that will throw millions
of our citizens out of work. Yet, we recognize our
international responsibilities. So in addition to acting
here at home, the United States will actively help developing nations
grow along a more efficient, more environmentally responsible path.
The hope of growth and opportunity and prosperity is
universal. It's the dream and right of every society on our
globe. The United States wants to foster economic growth in
the developing world, including the world's poorest
nations. We want to help them realize their potential, and
bring the benefits of growth to their peoples, including better health,
and better schools and a cleaner environment.
It would be unfair -- indeed, counterproductive -- to condemn
developing nations to slow growth or no growth by insisting that they
take on impractical and unrealistic greenhouse gas
targets. Yet, developing nations such as China and India
already account for a majority of the world's greenhouse gas emissions,
and it would be irresponsible to absolve them from shouldering some of
the shared obligations.
The greenhouse gas intensity approach I put forward today gives
developing countries a yardstick for progress on climate change that
recognizes their right to economic development. I look
forward to discussing this new approach next week, when I go to China
and Japan and South Korea. The United States will not
interfere with the plans of any nation that chooses to ratify the Kyoto
protocol. But I will intend to work with nations, especially
the poor and developing nations, to show the world that there is a
better approach, that we can build our future prosperity along a
cleaner and better path.
My budget includes over $220 million for the U.S. Agency for
International Development and a global environmental facility to help
developing countries better measure, reduce emissions, and to help them
invest in clean and renewable energy technologies. Many of
these technologies, which we take for granted in our own country, are
not being used in the developing world. We can help ensure
that the benefits of these technologies are more broadly
shared. Such efforts have helped bring solar energy to
Bangladesh, hydroelectric energy to the Philippines, geothermal
electricity to Kenya. These projects are bringing jobs and
environmental benefits to these nations, and we will build on these
successes.
The new budget also provides $40 million under the Tropical Forest
Conservation Act to help countries redirect debt payments towards
protecting tropical forests, forests that store millions of tons of
carbon. And I've also ordered the Secretary of State to develop a new
initiative to help developing countries stop illegal logging, a
practice that destroys biodiversity and releases millions of tons of
greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.
And, finally, my government is following through on our commitment
to provide $25 million for climate observation systems in developing
countries that will help scientists understand the dynamics of climate
change.
To clean the air, and to address climate change, we need to
recognize that economic growth and environmental protection go hand in
hand. Affluent societies are the ones that demand, and can therefore
afford, the most environmental protection. Prosperity is
what allows us to commit more and more resources to environmental
protection. And in the coming decades, the world needs to
develop and deploy billions of dollars of technologies that generate
energy in cleaner ways. And we need strong economic growth
to make that possible.
Americans are among the most creative people in our
history. We have used radio waves to peer into the deepest
reaches of space. We cracked life's genetic
code. We have made our air and land and water significantly
cleaner, even as we have built the world's strongest economy.
When I see what Americans have done, I know what we can
do. We can tap the power of economic growth to further
protect our environment for generations that follow. And
that's what we're going to do.
Thank you. (Applause.)
END 2:30 P.M. EST
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