Climate News 11-12-01

Published on Sunday, November 11, 2001 by the Associated Press
U.S. Reports Sharp Rise in Greenhouse Gas Emissions

WASHINGTON -- Heat-trapping carbon dioxide emissions jumped 3.1% in the
United States last year, the biggest one-year increase since the mid-1990s,
the Energy Department reported Friday.
Carbon dioxide emissions in 2000 were nearly 14% higher than in 1990, the
department's Energy Information Administration said. The global-warming pact
that President Bush rejected this year commits industrialized countries to
roll back "greenhouse" gas emissions to 1990 levels.

The unusually large increase in U.S. carbon dioxide emissions was the result
of strong economic growth in 2000, more use of fossil fuels due to colder
weather and a drought that impeded hydroelectric power generation, the agency
said. The report was an upward revision of a 2.7% preliminary estimate
released in June. Its release coincided with the last day of international
climate treaty talks in Morocco aimed at reaching a deal to curtail global
warming.

Senate Environment Chairman James M. Jeffords (I-Vt.) said Friday that the
United States, as the largest contributor to global warming, must take
responsibility for its share of the problem.

The United States remained on the sidelines at those talks Friday as
negotiators tried to overcome a deadlock over rules for cutting greenhouse
gases.

The controversy hinged on whether countries falling behind on mandatory cuts
can use "flexible mechanisms," such as pollution credits, to pay for other
nations that more than meet their targets.

Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Christie Whitman said the
United States has offset its greenhouse gas emissions in other ways.

"Just because you're not mandating everything from the top doesn't mean
you're not making a difference," she said in an interview with Associated
Press this week. "We're not going to obstruct any actions that any other
country wants to take."

As for the Bush administration's own proposals, Whitman said climate change
plans "got knocked off track by Sept. 11, but the president's very interested
in it and he asked at the last Cabinet meeting where we are. The staff has
been working on it right along."

Among the greenhouse gases, whose growing concentration in the atmosphere is
believed to be warming the Earth, carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels is
the most prevalent. Many scientists believe the warming, if not stopped, will
cause severe climate changes over the next century.

The United States and other industrialized countries agreed in 1992, at the
Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, to pursue voluntary actions to try to bring
greenhouse gas emissions back to 1990 levels by 2000.

But after realizing that goal would not be achieved, the same countries
agreed in 1997 in Kyoto, Japan, to mandatory commitments to reduce emissions
by 2012. The United States later withdrew from the Kyoto Protocol.

Bush has said voluntary actions and technology should be relied on to curb
emissions in a way that won't harm the U.S. economy.

The latest carbon emission numbers "underscore the urgent need for the United
States to begin cutting its emissions," said Eileen Claussen, a former State
Department climate treaty negotiator and now head of the private Pew Center
on Global Climate Change.

According to the Energy Department, the United States released 1,583 million
metric tons of carbon from fossil fuel burning in 2000, or 47 million metric
tons more than in 1999. The 3.1% growth rate was the biggest since a 3.6%
increase in 1996.

Power of prayer brings clean energy to American churches

Thursday, November 08, 2001
By Environmental News Network

A growing number of America's churches are keeping the lights on with wind
and solar power, generated without pollution or global warming emissions. The
switch to clean power is part of an interfaith movement that promotes
stewardship of the Earth as an important mission for religious peoples.
Responding to climate change, the 1997 General Convention of the Episcopal
Church USA passed a resolution calling on members to practice energy
efficiency.

The outreach began in earnest two years ago at Grace Church in the Episcopal
Diocese of San Francisco with the launch of The Regeneration Project, a San
Francisco–based public charity, a project of the Tides Center. With its
support, Rev. Sally Bingham, priest at Grace Cathedral who chairs the
Commission for the Environment of the Episcopal Diocese of California, and
Steve MacAusland, cochair of the Committee on Faith and the Environment for
the Diocese of Massachusetts, are developing the Episcopal Power and Light
(EP&L) ministry.

Within a year, nearly 60 religious groups in California had switched to green
power. To date, 27 churches in California have installed solar panels on
their roofs as part of a program within the Sacramento Municipal Utility.
Many have chosen to purchase renewable energy from Green Mountain Energy
Company, which brokers wind- and solar-generated electricity.

Bingham and MacAusland have been working quietly in churches across the
country to encourage the purchase of renewable energy, and EP&L has grown
into a national interfaith organization.

Last November, the Annual Convention of the Episcopal Diocese of
Massachusetts passed a resolution calling for the diocese to lead in the
formation of the Massachusetts Interfaith Energy Conservation Group.

In January, the Episcopal Diocese of Connecticut was the first customer in
the state to buy renewable power from Green Mountain Energy. Rt. Rev. James
Curry said at the time, "It is my great hope that our relationship with Green
Mountain Energy will promote conversations about clean air and clean energy
in the parishes and in the households of our church. And that our decision
might encourage other faith communities to make clean energy a priority in
their ministries."

Rev. Bingham will be in Knoxville, Tenn., this week to bring the renewable
energy message to the movement's new chapter, Tennessee Interfaith Power &
Light. She will preach a sermon titled "God's People and Earth's Future" and
will meet with the area's public and religious leaders to discuss the role
houses of worship can play in environmental stewardship.

Rev. Bingham's visit is the result of organizing work by the Southern
Alliance for Clean Energy, a nonprofit coalition of 21 environmental and
citizen organizations representing nearly 10,000 residents of the
Southeastern states. The alliance has brought together a group of people from
a wide range of religious backgrounds to work on renewable energy issues.
They have formed Tennessee Interfaith Power & Light to expand Episcopal Power
& Light's mission of stewardship into Tennessee.

One of EP&L's missions is to encourage the purchase of green power, often
from programs such as Green Power Switch, a program of the federal power
utility, the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA). In April, a year after its
launch, the Tennessee Valley Authority's Green Power Switch program has
attracted 3,260 residential customers and 150 businesses willing to pay a
little more for power from the sun and the wind.

Rev. Bingham's visit to Knoxville is taking her into a community receptive to
her stewardship message. Nearly half of all residential Green Power Switch
users came from one distributor — the Knoxville Utilities Board — which has
aggressively promoted the program in advertising, at community events, and
even in schools.

Twelve of TVA's 158 municipal power distributors and electric cooperatives
offered Green Power Switch to their customers in the first year. More than 40
are now waiting to do the same.

"They are the only utility in the Southeast that has a program of this size
and scale," said Stephen Smith, director of the Southern Alliance for Clean
Energy.

The Regeneration Project and the faith-based alliances it has created believe
that by using renewable energy they can help to limit global warming, which
is linked to the burning of coal, oil, and gas for electricity.

###
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
NOVEMBER 10, 2001
11:35 AM
CONTACT: World Wildlife Fund Climate Change Campaign
Liam Salter (Marrakech) 66-9-813-1499 (mobile) or Kathleen Sullivan,
202-778-9576 or 202-257-9959 (mobile)

Kyoto Protocol Completes Its Rise from the Ashes Says WWF

MARRAKECH, MOROCCO - November 10 - As environment ministers from 160
countries agreed on rules for the Kyoto climate treaty, World Wildlife Fund
called on governments today to turn the agreement into international law by
next September's World Summit on Sustainable Development.

In concluding the Marrakech Accord, ministers have confounded critics of the
agreement, led by the Bush Administration, which had declared the agreement
"dead" earlier this spring.

"The phoenix of the Kyoto Protocol has risen in Marrakech," said Jennifer
Morgan, Director of WWF's Climate Change Campaign. "There can be no further
excuse for governments to delay taking the next step of ratifying the treaty
before next September's Johannesburg Summit."

Despite vigorous efforts by its opponents, the Kyoto climate treaty has
bounced back from its low point last November when negotiations stalled in
The Hague. The accord maintains the essential architecture of last July's
Bonn Agreement, the landmark political agreement opening the way to bringing
Kyoto into force. The accord contains rules on a compliance regime with
enforceable and binding consequences for countries that do not meet their
Kyoto commitments. Ministers also completed the final details of the package
for reporting and reviewing countries' inventories, setting in place a sound
system based on IPCC methodologies.

Rules were also finalized for Joint Implementation projects under which
industrialized countries will earn carbon credits by investing in cleaner
technologies in each other's countries. Similarly, ministers concluded the
rules for the Clean Development Mechanism, which will commence almost
immediately. Today's agreement also formalizes the pledge made in Bonn
channeling an additional Euro 450 million annually to developing countries
from 2005.

WWF is concerned, however, that ministers failed to include a terms of
reference for the work program for sinks in the CDM and included more carbon
credits for forest management carbon in Russia. Nonetheless, WWF believes
that the missing safeguards will have no fundamental impact on the overall
emissions target of the Protocol.

The talks were not without their problems. Late on Thursday evening,
negotiations were drawing to a conclusion as the European Union and
developing nations reached agreement on a package proposal tabled by the
President. This was summarily vetoed by Japan, Russia, Canada and Australia
which insisted on further concessions beyond those they had already extracted
from the international community during July's Bonn meeting. Negotiations
continued late into Friday evening. The final barriers to the successful
conclusion of the accord were finally removed by good will by all countries
to finalize the agreement and move on to ratification.

In response to the weaknesses of the Protocol, environmental groups vowed in
Marrakech to prevent damaging projects from going ahead that exploit
loopholes already written into the Protocol. WWF's focus will now shift to
widening business and public involvement in measures that achieve Kyoto's
emission reduction goals, placing the emphasis on an enormous range of a
string of cost-effective domestic actions.

The Czech Republic has recently joined Romania in having ratified Kyoto. New
Zealand previously a critic of key aspects of Kyoto -- was among countries
announcing in Marrakech that it would ratify the treaty.

"The Kyoto Protocol was ready for ratification after July's Bonn Agreement,"
said Morgan. "The Marrakech accord takes it a significant step farther
forward and sends an even stronger signal to the shrinking ranks of doubters
in politics and in business to join in tackling global warming."

###

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