INTERNATIONAL GLOBAL CLIMATE CHANGE NEGOTIATIONS TUESDAY, MARCH 21, 1995 HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, SUBCOMMITTEE ON ENERGY AND POWER, Washington, DC. The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 1:05 p.m., in room 2123, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Dan Schaefer (chairman) presiding. Members present: Representatives Schaefer, Moorhead, Crapo, Burr, Norwood, Pallone, Bliley and Dingell. Staff present: Catherine G. Van Way, majority counsel, and Sue D. Sheridan, minority counsel. Mr. SCHAEFER. The Subcommittee on Energy and Power hearing will address today the status of the international global climate change negotiations. First of all, I would like to thank everybody for being here including our panels. I would like to say that the topic of today's hearing, the status of global climate change negotiations and the impact on the U.S. economy, should be very interesting. Next week the First Conference of the Parties to the Global Climate Change Treaty which the United States signed in Rio in 1992 begins meeting in Berlin. At that meeting a number of issues will be discussed including the issue of the adequacy of the current commitments. The purpose of this hearing is to determine what the administration hopes to achieve in Berlin and how that will impact U.S. industry and environment. The administration has taken the position that the current commitment for developed countries to aim to return greenhouse gas emissions to the 1990 levels by the year 2000 in order to stabilize concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is inadequate. Now that the administration has taken the position that the treaty is inadequate, it would like to negotiate a new aim for the treaty by 1997. I am extremely concerned about the administration's position that a new aim for the treaty should be agreed to by the year 1997 for several reasons. First, the United States has not yet developed a position on what the new aim should be. Thus it is unclear what we are negotiating towards. Second, we do not know yet if we or other developed countries can meet the current aim and, even if we do meet it, what impact it will have on the potential for global climate change. (1) Third, I am concerned, based on the last international climate change meeting, that the administration is willing to agree to a new aim for the treaty, which would increase commitments by developed countries only. This proposed aim is questionable because developing countries' emissions now exceed developed countries' emissions, and that trend is expected to continue as countries with large populations such as China and India begin to electrify. I believe all parties must be full participants in the treaty. Today I will have many questions for our witnesses regarding the adequacy issue and others. I believe we should have a better idea of what our goals are before we agree to begin any new negotiations, and now I would turn to my ranking member, my friend from New Jersey, Mr. Pallone. Mr. PALLONE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I am very pleased to have an opportunity today to offer support for the goals that the administration is trying to achieve as it prepares for the climate change discussions that will take place in Berlin in the next couple of weeks. No participant in this debate on climate change, in my opinion, should seriously question whether global warming is occurring. While we may not know the precise rate of change or all the impacts, we do know for certain that human activity has altered nature's course, and that alone is sobering, and I urge my colleagues not to lose sight of this fundamental fact. I was particularly interested over the weekend because if we could enter into the record, there was an article in the Washington Post about the effect of global warming and how it might increase the spread of disease throughout the world. Mr. SCHAEFER. Without objection. Mr. PALLONE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and also an editorial in the Sunday Post about the Berlin conference and some of the goals, if we could have that entered that into the record. As the more than 100 nations that have signed the global climate treaty prepare to gather in Berlin next week for their first meeting, some recent news bulletins from the planet set the stage. -Warming is changing the shape of the Antarctic Peninsula. Last month, an ice shelf disintegrated, breaking off an iceberg on which the State of Rhode Island would fit comfortably. Said one scientist: "Looking out of the aircraft window I was utterly amazed. . . . In 25 years of Antarctic fieldwork I have never seen anything like it." -A 50,000-square-mile region of the Pacific Ocean has lost 80 percent of its zooplankton, the microscopic organisms near the base of the food chain. The loss coincides with a four-decade rise in water temperature. One of the scientists reporting the results 2 weeks ago described himself as "flabbergasted" at how few fish and birds are left. "It's already pretty dead out there." -Coral reefs from the Caribbean to the South Pacific are sick, apparently from warmer water. Glaciers are in full retreat. Snow cover and arctic sea ice are declining. The weather pattern known as El Nino (which is causing California's current misery) is occurring more frequently and lasting longer. None of these proves that global warming is underway. Each of them could be due to natural fluctuations. But the accumulation of suggestive evidence leaves fewer doubts. Scientists will say on the record only what they can prove, but like everyone else they have gut feelings. For more and more of them the question is not if, but when and in what form, the greenhouse smoking gun will appear. Though major uncertainties remain, greenhouse science has made steady strides since the Convention was signed 3 years ago. Computer models of global climate can now produce a regional pattern that accounts for hitherto confounding patches of warming and cooling. The advance gives climatologists far greater confidence in the model's long-term predictions. Meanwhile, governments and a few industries (the insurance industry in particular) have been getting a taste of the possible costs of climate change. The last 10 years in the United States have seen a steady stream of multibillion-dollar weather disasters, beginning with the southeastern drought in 1986, the worst in 287 years, and including the drought that closed the Mississippi in 1988, its flood 5 years later, California's 6-year drought and its current floods, and a series of record-breaking hurricanes. The point is not that these are proof of climate change, though more frequent floods and more severe droughts are what the models predict. What they drive home in a way that no study can is that neither wealth nor high technology is protection against weather extremes. While they may recognize a greater vulnerability, governments have also learned that reducing carbon dioxide emissions is a lot harder than they had supposed so long as energy prices remain low. The climate convention called on the industrialized countries to bring their emissions back to 1990 levels by 2000. Of those that have submitted plans for doing so, nine of 15 countries expect to miss the goal. Because of higher economic growth and lower oil prices than were projected, and the defeat of the administration's Btu tax, it appears that the United States will exceed the voluntary target by a whopping 6 percent. The political climate is also a good deal less welcoming to ambitious international undertakings than it was at the Rio Summit. As the time nears when painful adjustments may have to be made, opposition stiffens from industries and countries that will be hurt. The leaders of the coalition trying to block action are oil-dependent Saudi Arabia and Kuwait and coal-dependent China. In this environment, not even die-hard greens expect the Berlin meeting to negotiate binding targets and timetables for cutting emissions. It is unlikely that it will ever prove possible to do so until there is conclusive evidence of warming. As long as a vigorous research and global monitoring effort is maintained-budget cutters, take note that's a reasonable risk to run. For now, success in Berlin has three elements. The conference must set up a system that will be able to act when it needs to. A mechanism to track and evaluate each country's emissions and voting rules that require large majorities but not consensus are crucial. It must also agree to begin thinking beyond 2000 even though the modest goals for that year will not be met. Given that emissions make themselves felt not just years or decades but centuries after they are produced, a 5-year horizon is ludicrously inept. Looking ahead means that reduction plans will have to include the developing countries where more future energy growth will occur. Finally, the conference needs to agree to the principle (known as joint implementation) that emissions reductions should be sought wherever they are cheapest, whether that is in the country that is paying for them (probably a developed country) or somewhere else (likely in the developing world). Though the idea is politically explosive because it suggests that rich societies won't have to change their lifestyles while poor ones will, no other approach makes economic or atmospheric sense. Greenhouse science doesn't today provide the smoking gun necessary for substantial emissions reductions. A growing number of signals from the planet suggests, however, that the time for action may not be far off. Berlin's vital task is global readiness. The writer is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. YES SHOULD WE FEAR A GLOBAL PLAGUE? DISEASE IS THE DEADLIEST THREAT OF RISING TEMPERATURES By Paul R. Epstein and Ross Gelbspan We're all familiar with future-horror stories about global warming-that in some distant era, the glaciers will melt, the oceans will rise and Florida will disappear beneath the waters. But a much more imminent and deadly-threat from climate change is already upon us and could be felt in North America as early as this summer. Scientists call it a worldwide redistribution of disease "vectors"-the animals, insects, microorganisms and plants that transmit disease to humans. To the layman, it means a global spread of infections. While natural climate change has been with us for eons, accumulating evidence suggests that man-made greenhouse gases are now beginning to destabilize global climatic patterns, triggering extreme weather events and causing the migration of various life forms. One result is the spread of some diseases, and the reemergence of others, throughout the world. Consider India's autumn of disease last year. For much of the summer, temperatures had soared from their normal 80-90 degrees and hovered around 124 degrees. By fall, animal carcasses littered the plains and stored grain caches proved furnaces for fleas. Above the baking landscape, rippling columns of air ascended, leaving lowpressure systems that lured in moisture-laden ocean air. Three-month monsoons bequeathed breeding sites for malaria, dengue fever and pneumonic plague. By the time the epidemics ran their course, the three diseases had afflicted thousands of Indians and killed as many as 4,000. Now consider the United States. Long-range climate forecasts by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Climate Analysis Center show increased potential this year for conditions conducive to vector-borne disease. Corresponding National Weather Service forecasts suggest that this summer may be ripe for the expansion of dengue fever in the American Southeast and the reemergence of Eastern Encephalitis (EEE) in the Northeast. The world will now have a chance to confront this new menace at an international climate convention representing 120 nations that will assemble in Berlin for 2 weeks beginning tomorrow to refine and implement the Global Climate Treaty signed in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. With the 1987 Montreal Protocol on protecting the ozone layer as a precedent, the conference has an opportunity to reduce significantly the world's output of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases and thereby help control not only climate change but the resulting spread of disease. The global redistribution of infections has attracted increasing attention for some time, but most reports focus on growing resistance to antibiotics or on ecological changes and the economic inequities that increase vulnerability to disease. The accounts largely ignore the critical-and growing-role of global climate change in the worldwide movement of many disease-carriers. The process of redistribution is simple and natural. Weeds, rodents, insects, bacteria and viruses-known as r-strategists-rapidly reproduce and colonize disturbed environments. Larger, slower developing K-strategists such as predatory birds and animals are superior competitors under stable conditions, but they submit to the opportunists when their habitat is fragmented, polluted or altered by rapid climatic change. Fossil records "paleothermometers"-demonstrate that during warm epochs, insects have proliferated and extended their range more swiftly than have plants. One indication of the current spread of climate-related disease can be seen in the migration of Aedes aegypn mosquitoes, which carry dengue and yellow fever. Historically restricted by temperature to 1,000 meters in altitude, the mosquitoes now have been reported above 1,350 meters in Costa Rica and at 2,200 meters in Colombia. Malaria carriers are appearing at higher elevations in Central Africa. These biological changes parallel the movement of plants to higher altitudes on three continents and the northward shift of California coastal marine species recently reported in Science magazine. The movement of insects, rodents, microorganisms and weeds affects agriculture as well as humans. But published predictions of favorable crop yields in North America under warming scenarios take no account of plant pests and pathogens which, like those affecting humans, have ecological thresholds and respond to shifts in temperatures and precipitation. Chemical control measures offer no comfort; the long-term use of pesticides to destroy proliferating pests cultivates genetic resistance and kills the fish, birds, lacewings and ladybugs that naturally regulate those populations. While climate determines distribution of disease, weather determines the timing of outbreaks. Extreme conditions affect marine, plant and human health by affording opportunistic species fresh terrain and generating new bursts of activity. The drying up of ponds concentrates microorganisms, while floods contaminate clean water, and droughts encourage locusts and rodents, while floods foster fungi. The phenomenon called El Nino-the periodic eastward displacement of the Pacific's great warm water pool-is the most powerful known determinant of global weather patterns. Warm and cold El Nino events are associated with large sea mammal die-offs; El Nino warm years are associated with upsurges of malaria globally, cholera in Bangladesh, hepatitis, diarrhea and dysentery in South America and EEE in Massachusetts. In 1994, the latest El Nino year, dengue blanketed the Car |