Embassy of the United States

Ambassador April H. Foley (2006-2009)

Remarks at the Conference "In the 24th Hour - The Effects of Global Warming on Europe and Hungary" 

Budapest
October 3, 2007

Good morning.  It is a great pleasure to be here to talk about a subject close to my heart, climate change.

The timing of this conference is perfect. 

• On September 24th, the UN held a special High Level Event on Climate Change. 
• And last Thursday in Washington, President Bush convened a meeting of the world's 17 major economies.  These countries are also the world's major greenhouse gas emitters. Their objective was to work toward a post-2012 framework agreement.

I'm sure many of you have strong ideas about climate change.  I hope my remarks will spur you to view U.S. attitudes and actions in a full light. 
 
First, I'll discuss the problem of climate change in broad terms.
 
Second, I hope to persuade you that the U.S. is just as concerned about climate change as Hungary and others in Europe.
 
Third, I will emphasize that the best long-term way to reduce greenhouse gases is both to regulate emissions and to deploy new clean technologies.
 
Fourth, I will underline that U.S. efforts are aimed at reinforcing and accelerating the UN's Bali process, not undermining it.
 
Let me begin with an unpleasant truth.  The United States is a, if not the, world leader in total greenhouse gas emissions.  And why is this so?  Simply stated, America has the world's largest economy.  Although the U.S. has only 5 percent of the world's population, it accounts for 25 percent of global economic output.  Our substantial GDP is reflected in higher levels of personal income, bigger houses, more travel, more cars, and so on.
 
It would be easy to say "well, stop consuming so much".  But Americans aren't any different from Hungarians or other Europeans.  They too want to enjoy all the pleasures life provides.  Other contributions to the problem?  Importantly, the population of the world is increasing. More people are enjoying rising incomes.  Even though China's GDP is only one-sixth the size of the United States, China is about to become the world's number one greenhouse gas emitter.  We all applaud China's rapid economic growth.  Its rising living standards are critical for the welfare of its people.  But China's situation also highlights the magnitude of the environmental challenges we face.

The challenge is not really "how do we get those Americans to behave!"  Of course, we do have much to do in the U.S.  The challenge is how to reduce greenhouse gas emissions worldwide, while populations grow, economies develop and personal incomes rise.  The answer is not simple. 

Broadly speaking, there are three ways:

1. Improve energy efficiency
2. Increase the proportion of non-greenhouse gas emitting energy sources - so called alternative energy options; and
3. Develop ways to recapture and sequester greenhouse gases.

So how much potential does each of these offer?  Let's take them one at a time.

Efficiency is probably the most appealing because it appears to come at no cost, but this is only partly true.  With some modest and painless changes in behavior, certain efficiencies can be easily gained.  But this is often more complicated than it looks.  In Hungary, for example, many people live in apartments built during the Communist era where people regulate temperature by opening windows to let the hot air out.  Residents in these blocks have no incentive to be energy efficient, since their bills are the same whether they conserve energy or not.  Without a metering system for individual apartments that provides individuals with financial benefits for conservation, conservation efforts are likely to be quite limited.  In other cases, efficiency improvements involve higher upfront costs, which can sometimes be a barrier, even though they result in less energy consumption over time.  Two examples are better home insulation and fluorescent lighting. 

Efficiency improvements are absolutely critical, but they also have theoretical limits.  Most experts agree that efficiency alone can only reduce the amount of greenhouse gas emissions by the projected amount of emissions growth over the next 10-15 years.  So, even if we were to capture all available efficiency improvements, we would still be at current emission levels in 2017.

To really reduce overall emissions - not just hold steady - we have to look to alternative energy and recapture or sequestration technologies.  Alternative energy includes solar, hydro, wind, and nuclear, among others, and currently accounts for 19.7 percent of worldwide energy production.  That is up from only 14.6 percent in 1971.  Most of the increase from 1971 is the result of increased nuclear power.  And by the way, the key to understanding France's low per capita greenhouse gas emissions is its high usage of nuclear power. 
 
Recapture and sequestration, including clean coal and reforestation, offer great potential for the future.  To that end, President Bush has moved forward with $1.6 billion in tax credits to help build nine advanced coal projects using technology that cuts emissions through efficiency and holds the promise of cost-effective carbon capture and storage.  

Let's be clear.  There are no easy solutions when it comes to reducing greenhouse gas emissions.  The problem isn't going to be solved just by people turning down their thermostats a degree or two and buying a hybrid car.  That would help - no doubt about it - but even if everyone in the world traded in their current cars for hybrids, greenhouse gas emissions would drop by less than 10 percent.

The solutions to the problem will come through multiple breakthroughs in technology, such as fuel cells and other non-fossil fuels for transportation and power generation, rapid reforestation or other means of carbon capture, or maybe technologies that are unknown or seem out of reach today.

Let me address for a moment how Americans and the U.S. Government see the climate change challenge, because I think U.S. attitudes are often misunderstood.

The United States has a long tradition of resource conservation and activism on environmental issues.  If you have traveled to the U.S., you probably visited one of our National Parks, which is part of a massive park system created more than a century ago.  You also may know about the thousands of governmental and non-governmental programs that have created land banks and other means for protecting our land, waterways, and coastlines. 

The United States was at the forefront of the earliest efforts to clean-up rivers and lakes and reduce air pollution from cars and industry.  The establishment of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the adoption of the federal Clean Air Act in 1970 led the world, as did specific actions like the phase-out of lead in gasoline in the early 1980s.  Many of the regulatory and technological solutions employed around the world to address environmental challenges originated in the United States.  These solutions, it should be noted, often came only after long and spirited public debate on the extent of the problem and the best approach.  The climate change challenge is proceeding along a similar path.

In the last few years, a political consensus has been building on climate change.  As that consensus has grown, President Bush has proposed increasingly ambitious programs, including:

• regulatory mandates,
• tax incentives,
• and education campaigns. 

The Energy Policy Act of 2005 established new tax rules and loan guarantee programs to encourage investment in energy efficiency and clean energy technologies. 

In his State of the Union Address in January, President Bush proposed the "20 in 10" initiative, a very ambitious program to achieve a 20 percent reduction in fossil fuel consumption from automobiles in 10 years.  This single initiative would achieve faster and deeper results than the EU's 10 percent biofuels initiative. 

Likewise, the U.S. is leading the way in second generation cellulosic ethanol research. The first new technology plant is likely to begin running next year. 

Since 2001, the U.S. Government has spent $37 billion on climate-related science, data assessment, technology, international assistance, and incentive programs to address climate change challenges.

And here I would like to stress a very important point.  An area that often gets ignored is the very significant role of the US private sector.  There's an old saying, if you want to know where the action is, follow the money.  When it comes to solutions to the 21st century challenge of climate change, look where the big investors are putting their cash.  More and more, the hard cash investors - the ones who are in it, not because they have a sense of mission, but to make a profit, are putting their money in clean technology.
 
As a result of all these efforts, both from government and the private sector, the United States is expected to avoid emitting more than 2.2 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalents from 2002 to 2012.  This corresponds to taking all U.S. passenger vehicles off the road for more than one year.  As history has repeatedly shown, once a broad consensus emerges on an issue, the U.S. is very good at developing and implementing innovative solutions quickly.
 
Let me slay one common myth affecting many people's perception of the U.S. Government's attitude toward climate change:  Kyoto.  The U.S. decision not to join Kyoto was widely interpreted as a lack of concern or interest in addressing climate change.  This simply is not true.

The United States has always been a leader on international environmental initiatives.  The Montreal Protocol - described by Kofi Annan as the most important and successful international environmental treaty in history - was negotiated and signed during the Reagan Presidency.  It not only eliminated ozone-depleting chemicals but has already produced 10 times as much greenhouse gas reductions as the first phase of Kyoto.

As for Kyoto itself, it was the culmination of a U.S.-initiated but, in the end, mostly EU-designed program for addressing climate change.  The hope was to draw-in all large emitters - developed and developing alike.  But it did not.  The U.S. felt that restrictions placed on it by Kyoto would merely result in manufacturing and jobs being shifted from the U.S. to countries like India and China, with no net reduction in global greenhouse gas emissions.  Whether or not you agree with the U.S. decision, I hope you will agree that it was based on real concerns about whether Kyoto would produce the intended results.  It was not that the U.S. doesn't care about climate change.

So how are we doing?

Probably to your great surprise, much better than I bet many of you think.  During the most recent reporting period, 2000-2005, the U.S. did a better job at controlling greenhouse gas emissions than the EU.  According to UNFCCC data, U.S. greenhouse emissions went up by less than 1.6 percent.  Yet, at the same time, our economy grew by 12 percent - or about $2 trillion.  Our population increased by 15 million people, more than one-and-a-half times the population of Hungary.  According to the same UNFCCC data, during the same period, 2000-2005, EU-27 emissions increased 1.5 percent, almost the same as the U.S., although Europe experienced a slower rate of economic and population growth.

Another way to measure climate change performance is greenhouse gas intensity, which is the amount of greenhouse gas emissions per unit of GDP.  Using this as your measure is quite revealing.  While the U.S. economy has soared, our emissions have risen only slightly.  As a result during 2000-2005, U.S. greenhouse gas intensity decreased 8.5 percent.  In Europe, the trend is also headed in the right direction.  But progress is less dramatic, with greenhouse gas intensity falling 4.5 percent for the 2000-2004 period. 

Beyond the numbers, a lot of encouraging things are happening:

• more and better science,
• more active dialogue
• and greater media attention have raised public awareness. 

In both the U.S. and Europe, CO2 emissions are starting to influence what cars people buy.  The carbon footprint of this or that activity is being taken into account.  And the role of nuclear power is being reconsidered, given its great potential for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

There has also been a lot of progress in developing a range of multilateral initiatives, including:

• the Methane to Markets Partnership,
• the Asia Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate,
• the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership and the brand new International Clean Technology Fund - all started by the Bush Administration. 
• And, of course, there is the process just begun last week in Washington with the Major Economies Meeting - a process we hope will reinforce and accelerate efforts to find broader UN agreement in Bali in December.  All of this should debunk the stereotype of the United States as a go-it-alone actor on the environment. 

Climate change is a serious challenge, but we have had challenges in the past that seemed as insurmountable in their day.  They were solved once public awareness was raised, a political consensus developed, and governments and the private sector began working together to address the problem.  The success of last week's meetings in New York and Washington makes clear we are headed in the right direction.  The EU and the U.S. understand the importance of bringing China, India, and all fast-growing, developing countries into a global agreement. 

So, let me conclude by underlining the point I made at the outset.  The United States is committed to working multilaterally to bring all major economies into a post-2012 energy security and climate framework.  We must move past the finger-pointing of the past and toward specific, concerted, truly global efforts to change the way our economies work.  In this way, we will support our shared dual goals of improving human development and reducing human impact on the climate at the same time. 

Thank you very much.