U.S. weakens plan on global warming

WASHINGTON — Bush administration officials working behind the scenes have succeeded in weakening key sections of a proposal for joint action by the eight major industrialized nations to curb global warming.

Under U.S. pressure, negotiators in the past month have agreed to delete language that would detail how rising temperatures are affecting the globe, set ambitious targets to cut carbon-dioxide emissions and set stricter environmental standards for World Bank-funded power projects, according to documents obtained by The Washington Post. Negotiators met this week in London to work out details of the document, which is slated to be adopted next month at the Group of Eight's annual meeting in Scotland.

The administration's push to alter the G-8's plan on global warming marks its latest effort to edit scientific or policy documents to accord with its position that mandatory carbon-dioxide cuts are unnecessary.

Under mounting international pressure to adopt stricter controls on heat-trapping greenhouse-gas emissions, Bush officials have consistently sought to modify U.S. government and international reports that would endorse a more aggressive approach to mitigating global warming.

Last week, The New York Times reported that a senior White House official had altered government documents to emphasize the uncertainties surrounding the science on global warming. That official, Phillip Cooney, left the administration Friday to take a public-relations job with oil giant Exxon Mobil Corp., a leading opponent of mandatory limits on greenhouse-gas emissions.

The wording of the international document, titled "Climate Change, Clean Energy and Sustainable Development," will help determine what, if any, action G-8 nations will take as a group to combat global warming.

Every member nation except the United States has pledged to bring its greenhouse-gas emissions down to 1990 levels by 2012 as part of the Kyoto Protocol, an international treaty. British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who heads the G-8, is trying to coax the U.S. into adopting stricter emissions controls.

In preparation for the summit, negotiators are trying to work out the wording of statements on global warming and other issues that leaders of all eight nations are willing to endorse. The language is not final, but the documents show that a number of deletions have been made at U.S. insistence.

Although the new statement by G-8 leaders may not dramatically alter the other nations' policies on global warming, what it says could mark a shift for the United States. (The other G-8 members are Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and Russia.) U.S. officials pressed negotiators to drop sections of the report that highlight some problems tied to global warming, that warn of more frequent droughts and floods, and that endorse the Kyoto Protocol.

One deleted section, for example, initially cited "increasingly compelling evidence of climate change, including rising ocean and atmospheric temperatures, retreating ice sheets and glaciers, rising sea levels, and changes to ecosystems."

It added: "Inertia in the climate system means that further warming is inevitable. Unless urgent action is taken, there will be a growing risk of adverse effects on economic development, human health and the natural environment, and of irreversible long-term changes to our climate and oceans."

Instead, U.S. negotiators substituted a sentence that reads, "Climate change is a serious long- term challenge that has the potential to affect every part of the globe."

James Connaughton, who heads the White House Council on Environmental Quality, said the United States was in "extremely constructive discussions on preparing leadership text for the G-8 meeting" that would outline the world's climate-change problem in a "succinct and strong" manner.

"It's very important to view [the deletions] in context," Connaughton said. "The overall context is one of strong consensus about a shared commitment to practical action, as well as defined management strategies."

But environmentalists and Democrats criticized the administration for trying to water down the international coalition's initiative.

"The administration is pursuing a dangerous 'ostrich' policy: Put your head in the sand and pretend nothing's happening," said Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass. "They're doing it to the detriment of the American people and the planet."

The new controversy follows recent charges by several climate specialists that Bush's appointees are exerting undue political influence on government documents on global warming.

Last week, Rick Piltz, a policy expert and former Democratic congressional aide who worked until March in the office coordinating federal research on climate change, released documents showing that Cooney, the White House official, had repeatedly edited the office's documents in ways that touted the possible benefits of higher temperatures as well as the "significant and fundamental" uncertainties surrounding global warming.

Before joining the administration, Cooney was a lobbyist for the American Petroleum Institute.

In December, the U.S. Climate Change Science Program, where Piltz worked, issued new guidelines requiring that a series of federal assessments of global warming be reviewed by senior officials before final publication. Several experts objected that the requirement undermines their scientific independence, and senior scientist Eric Sundquist of the U.S. Geological Survey stepped down as lead author on one report in protest.