Experts Battle Over Global Warming

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE, TO ENVIRONMENTAL EDITORS:

Experts Battle Over Global Warming

Climate Change Policy Exposes Different Opinions, Approach

WASHINGTON, DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA, Feb. 9 -/E-Wire/-- Sharp differences on the direction of climate change policy and the future of a controversial international treaty aimed reducing greenhouse gas emissions were hotly debated yesterday at a National Press Club forum sponsored by Freedom 21. Freedom 21 is a coalition of organizations aimed at advancing the principles of freedom in local communities, Washington, and throughout the world. (www.freedom21.org)

Rt. Hon John Gummer, MP, former British Environment Minister, climate change negotiator and ardent advocate for the treaty known as the Kyoto Protocol, faced off with former congressional committee aide and conservative think tank head, Marlo Lewis, a strong foe of Kyoto.

Lewis, currently Director of External Relations at the Reason Foundation, was standing in for former conservative Presidential candidate and United Nations Ambassador Alan Keyes who was unable to attend for personal reasons.

The fireworks erupted early and often as Gummer and Lewis jousted over the current status of the science of climate change, as well as the practicality of the proposed Kyoto solution.

"Climate Change is a matter that needs to be taken very seriously, evident especially by the temperature increase and the rate at which sea levels have risen," Gummer opined. "The cost of the Kyoto Protocol does not exceed the cost of what it will take to repair damage done by man to the Earth."

He also said Great Britain has a volume of records and maps that illustrate how waters have risen over the past 400 years, and that most of the rise has occurred during the last 20 years.

"Britain has 350 years of weather reports showing that seven of the 10 hottest years in history have occurred in the past 15," He added. "The best evidence comes from 400,000 years of ice bores, which show that in no other time has temperature changed so much and so rapidly."

Lewis fired back citing uncertainty among the scientific community due to the complex nature of our climate system, as well as conflicting satellite temperature readings that show virtually no warming.

He also added the Kyoto Protocol as a policy solution to addressing climate change is dying, and deservedly so. Lewis referred to the collapse of talks at a recent negotiating session in The Hague that has threatened to kill the controversial international march toward a binding treaty started in Japan in 1997.

But Lewis also warned that strong international and domestic influences have not given up hope of restarted the doomed negotiations.

Lewis also accused the EU of blowing up negotiations because they knew Kyoto would impose unbearable burdens on everyone and couldn't be fixed.

"The EU would not tolerate any proposals from the United States," Lewis said. "The United States bent over backwards to try to meet the Europeans demands and they still said no, which meant the US had no face saving position."

Lewis skewed Gummer by using one of Gummer's own papers saying the Kyoto targets were overreaching. He also backed up his parry with comments from former Clinton negotiator, Eileen Claussen, who last summer and during The Hague negotiations also called Kyoto's targets "unrealistic."

Gummer took on the claims of a heavy economic burden that the United States and others claim will fall on developed countries if Kyoto was enacted saying acting to address emissions need not be painful.

"The United States is changing everyone's climate, using 125% more energy that any developing nation. The rich countries must plant this seed and lead by example. This is a common sense, moral imperative.

The U.S. can meet your commitments without any different measures at all," Gummer said. "England has become much more efficient. The United States uses twice as much energy, but does not get twice as much out of it.

"If we are to be stewards of our environment, if we can stop people from littering on the street, why do we not take the same care with the environment," he added.

Lewis countered Gummer's claims of a painless Kyoto as "foolishness" adding that Kyoto and the global marketplace are on a collision course.

"There is no way to implement Kyoto without a 'wrenching transformation,'" Lewis said, using the term Al Gore penned in his 1992 environmental manifesto, Earth in the Balance. "There is no painless way to do it. Consumption is growing dramatically. If we want to maintain our comfort and our necessities, we cannot damage our energy infrastructure of civilization."

More than 75 people from conservative groups, think tanks, environmental organizations, and congressional and government offices crowded into the 90-minute forum. The panel also took a number of questions from the crowd on issues varying from technical aspects of the treaty such as emissions trading and the role of developing countries to scientific advances and recent reports of melting ice sheets at both poles.

Several additional organizations helped Freedom 21 coordinate and organize the debate, including: Sovereignty International, Environmental Conservation Organization (ECO), Eagle Forum, American Policy Center, the University of Texas-Austin and the Heartland Institute.

Maureen O'Brien can be reached at (202) 466-7391 ext. 1106 or [REDACTED-EMAIL]

Maureen O''Brien can be reached at (202) 466-7391 ext. 1106 or [REDACTED-EMAIL]

http://http://www.freedom21.org

http://http://www.pcgpr.com

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