Greenhouse Gas

New Jersey is poised to take on global warming with a plan that imposes some of the nation's strictest limits on greenhouse-gas emissions. Under legislation overwhelmingly approved last week by the Assembly and Senate, the state would cut its emissions to 1990 levels by 2020 and to 80 percent of last year's levels by 2050. The bill would set into law the recommendations Gov. Corzine made in February via executive order and now awaits his signature. The plan puts New Jersey at the forefront of a growing number of states imposing their own global-warming crackdowns while citing an absence of federal leadership.

In one of the most ambitious governmental actions yet taken on global warming, Gov. Corzine yesterday signed an executive order calling for his state to dramatically cut its greenhouse-gas emissions. Under the order, New Jersey would cut its emissions to 1990 levels - a reduction of 20 percent - by 2020. It calls for a total 80 percent reduction by 2050. "Today we have taken steps to preserve our planet for our children and grandchildren by adopting aggressive goals for the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions," Corzine said in a press release.

Climate change is by nature a global problem. So when a Pennsylvania State University graduate student presented Montgomery County officials with a 145-page report on what it could do to reduce greenhouse gases - the culprits in global warming - Commissioner Thomas Jay Ellis was skeptical. Could one county - even one with more people than some states - make a difference in such a huge problem? Ellis and his fellow commissioners decided this month that it could at least try. Montgomery County, which emits more greenhouse gases than more than half the world's nations do individually, thereby joined a burgeoning list of cities, counties and states that have stopped waiting for federal direction on global-warming remediation.

ON FEB. 15, the eve of the effective date of the Kyoto Treaty on global warming, I introduced the Pennsylvania Greenhouse Gas Reduction Act (H.B. 500), which would represent an important first step for Pennsylvania in addressing global climate change. Our federal government's failure to sign on to Kyoto makes it even more important for individual states to take action. Pennsylvania has a particular responsibility to act. Our state alone produces about 1 percent of the world's greenhouse gas emissions, more than 105 developing nations combined.

President Bush proposed yesterday to slice by 70 percent the levels of three air pollutants from power plants, using strategies heavy on economic incentives and light on regulations. He also proposed voluntary goals that could slightly slow the increase in greenhouse gas emissions that lead to global warming. "To clean the air, and to address climate change, we need to recognize that economic growth and environmental protection go hand in hand," Bush said. That, he said, is because only affluent societies can afford "the most environmental protection.

The U.S.-European rift on global warming extends to the world's three dominant oil companies. BP Amoco P.L.C. and Royal Dutch/Shell Group, which are based in Europe, have joined the campaign to reduce global warming. Exxon Mobil Corp., which has its headquarters in Irving, Texas, remains outside the campaign, arguing in newspaper advertisements and speeches for a more cautious approach. President Bush will argue for the approach that Exxon Mobil prefers when he meets with European leaders today in Sweden.

The Bush administration appears to be moving at breakneck speed to derail environmental protections targeting not only those initiated by the last administration, but also those that were enacted into law with broad bipartisan support. Soon after overturning a campaign promise to control a greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide, and delay logging restrictions on federal lands, the Bush administration has now announced it will withdraw new standards designed to protect the public from arsenic in drinking water.

New Jersey yesterday became the first state in the nation to set its own target for cutting the greenhouse gases believed to be changing the Earth's climate. "No one else has taken this step," said Robert Shinn, commissioner of the state Department of Environmental Protection. Eighteen states and 14 cities have climate-change programs, but none has gone as far as setting numeric cuts in greenhouse gases. Under the plan, New Jersey would seek to reduce its emissions of these man-made gases by 2005 to about 131 million tons a year, or 3.5 percent less than the 136-million-ton level of 1990.

Kudos to the Ford Motor Co. for deciding that all its large pickup trucks will meet current federal air pollution standards four years early. That means more than 800,000 of Ford's trucks, including the popular F-series, will meet low-emission standards in the 2000 model year, which rolls out this fall. As of yet the other major vehicle makers have not followed suit. They should. But Ford only gets one-and-a-half cheers. U.S. manufacturers, including Ford, are sidestepping the equally important issues of fuel economy and greenhouse gas emissions.

The debate over greenhouse emissions has become even hotter. By signing the Kyoto Protocol, our administration supports an environmentally ineffective and economically unfair initiative. This protocol, negotiated in 1997 in Japan, has been publicly scrutinized because of unanswered questions and economic pitfalls. Prior to the Kyoto meeting, the Senate voted 95-0 that the United States not sign any agreement imposing unequal commitments on industrialized and developing nations and resulting in serious harm to the U.S. economy.