Clinton "Global Warming" Plan
Finds Critics From Both Sides

WASHINGTON — President Bill Clinton has finally announced the plan his administration intends to propose in Japan this December at the "global warming" treaty convention.

To no one’s surprise, it has detractors on both sides of the issue.

The plan calls for reducing U.S. carbon dioxide emissions to 1990 levels by the year 2012; a five-year, $5 billion program of tax incentives, research and development; credits to industry for early emissions reductions; an international system for trading "emissions credits" within 10 years; and requiring some developing as well as developed countries to reduce emissions.

Most environmental activist groups are attacking the proposal as too little, too late; their agenda all along has sought crippling emissions limits as a way of rolling back technological progress and reducing the "wasteful" western standard of living to a level of regimented squalor that they consider morally acceptable.

The productive sector, on the other hand, objects to arbitrary — and mandatory — emissions limits that are supposed to address a problem which may not even exist. Critics from that side note as well that Clinton has threatened to impose his scheme through decree if he can’t force it through a skeptical Congress. They see the plan as a thinly camouflaged version of Clinton’s earlier "BTU tax," which even a liberal Democratic Congress shot down in flames.

"We’ve known all along that Clinton wants to impose new energy taxes or rationing schemes on the American people," says Fred Smith, president of the Competitive Enterprise Institute. "But we were surprised when Clinton admitted that he will use executive orders, government regulations, and other non-democratic means to implement his schemes without any congressional input. Frankly, we long suspected this, but we are surprised he admitted his plans."

By attracting fire from both sides, Clinton has positioned himself as a "moderate" on the "global warming" issue, but CEI’s Smith isn’t buying that portait.

"It would be a colossal mistake to regard Clinton’s positions as ‘moderate,’" he insists. "Just because radical green groups want to do even more of a bad thing doesn’t make Clinton’s proposal ‘responsible’ or reasonable. Clinton’s so-called ‘modest’ proposal will put Americans on an energy starvation diet that will impose real hardships on working families."

He takes issue with the central premise behind the push for emissions limits. "The idea that we can make people and nations safer and healthier by making them poorer is wrongheaded and dangerous," Smith continues. "In addition, Clinton has failed to mention that reducing our emissions output will have absolutely no effect on the global climate. This is an ‘all pain, no gain’ treaty."

One immediate problem with the Clinton scheme is that it contains little or nothing in the way of details, even at this late stage in the game. It fails to spell out, for instance, just what tax "incentives" the administration proposes to offer, how research and development moneys would be targeted, and what those funds are intended to accomplish. It is, in short, a pig in a poke, and both Americans and international negotiators are expected to buy it sight unseen.

Says Edison Electric Institute president Thomas R. Kuhn, Clinton’s claim that the United States can "achieve cuts in greenhouse gases with little or no cost to Americans’ pocketbooks could amount to little more than wishful thinking."

Actually, contends the Wall Street Journal, the "wishful thinking" is being done by government bureaucrats worldwide who see the "warming" treaty as a source of under-the-table revenue.

"Whatever the state of the polar ice caps," says a Journal editorial from last Thursday, "the one thing that truly does seem to be melting in our time is the global electorate’s enthusiasm for politicians’ tax-driven public crusades, most of which don’t work very well anymore. So with voters increasingly resistant to higher levels of direct taxation, the politicians have begun looking for techniques to get the money in roundabout ways, such as taxing industrial activity branded as evil. Global warming, you may have read, is evil."

While much of the world’s leadership debates how much pain is acceptable in the fight against theoretical "warming," voices questioning the whole notion go mostly ignored — even though they have much more rational and compelling science on their side.

Among them are researchers from the Illinois State Water Survey, who predict that their states and others will actually grow cooler by several degrees through the year 2050.

Climatologists Dr. Derek Winstanley, chief of the survey, and Stanley Changnon, former survey chief, said they believe more factors need to be considered in models used to predict global warming.

Their research has found that Illinois and other states in the eastern part of the country are actually getting cooler, not warmer, as predicted by earlier models.

Winstanley said he feels there has been too much emphasis placed on so-called "greenhouse gases" such as carbon dioxide, which are claimed to lead to global warming.

"In the past few years scientists have recognized that other human influences can also affect climate. They're beginning to incorporate these other factors into the climate models that are used to make climate projections," he said.

One of those human variables is the production of sulfate particles from burning fossil fuels such as coal, Winstanley said.

"They result from the emission of sulfur dioxide. They're the same gas and the same particles that cause acid rain. These little particles in the atmosphere reflect the sunlight and change the clouds with the overall effect of cooling the climate," he said.

Winstanley said he has been working on global climate problems for years, while Changnon has spent more time looking at the effect of climate changes in Illinois.

When he started looking at climate records in Illinois, Winstanley said he realized the state was actually cooling.

He said temperatures in the states south of Illinois — including Mississippi, Texas, Alabama, and Georgia — are also cooler than earlier in the century.

That corresponds with observations of longtime residents, from ranchers in Texas who in recent years found dirt tanks freezing over for the first time in memory, to citrus growers in Florida whose orchards have been freezing progressively further south.

One reason for the cooling, Winstanley said, is natural variability in climate. Another reason could be related to effects from substances such as sulfur dioxide.

"We need to make sure both science and policy address all the causes of climate change and not just emphasize greenhouse gases," he cautioned.

So far, Winstanley’s common-sense warnings aren’t getting many ears.