Global warming fight is affordable, says new report

Aggressively cutting carbon emissions would cost only 3 percent of world economic growth between now and 2030, says a UN-sponsored study endorsed by 105 countries.

posted May 4, 2007 at 3:00 p.m. EDT

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The report lays out the potential to cut emissions in a wide variety of ways, including cleaner energy sources, tighter building standards, higher vehicle mileage standards, biofuels, and new farming techniques. These measures could substantially offset growth in carbon emissions "and even bring emissions below current levels," Dr. Metz says. "That is a significant potential."

The final wording in the IPCC summary resulted from a week of sometimes torturous talk in Bangkok among delegations from 105 countries.

From the White House's perspective, the results validate President Bush's reliance on new technologies to achieving his goal of reducing the country's carbon "intensity" by 18 percent by 2012. The Bush administration aims to limit the rate of carbon dioxide emissions per unit of growth in the nation's gross domestic product (GDP).

The report "really highlights the importance of deploying a portfolio of clean-energy technologies globally," said Harlan Watson, who headed the US delegation to this week's negotiations in Bangkok. "It's totally consistent with President Bush's approach to addressing climate change."

But others say the administration should find little solace in other aspects of the report. It places little value on carbon intensity as a benchmark for progress, since even a more efficient economy still pumps CO2 into the atmosphere – where it will stay for centuries.

"You can use an intensity number as long as your intensity decrease is bigger than your economic growth, because that would mean net reductions in emissions," says Jonathan Pershing, an economist with the World Resources Institute in Washington and a lead author of a chapter in the new report. But that is not the case with the current US approach. The economy is still pumping CO2 into the atmosphere. Indeed, carbon intensity in the industrialized world has been falling for some time, Dr. Metz adds, because of "business as usual" investments in energy efficiency. But CO2 emissions have still grown. In addition, many see a worrisome rise in emissions in developing countries – particularly China and India.

Moreover, Dr. Pershing continues, if a country is trying to set up an emissions-trading scheme for CO2 between businesses or industries – a widely discussed approach to capping emissions – using intensity targets instead of absolute cuts in emissions leads to a hopelessly complex system.

While voluntary approaches can lead to measurable cuts in emissions, they hold little hope for reductions beyond "business as usual," the IPCC report says.

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