Report on The State Department Climate Action: Introduction and Overview
International Activities
No single country can resolve the problem of global climate change.
Recognizing this, the United States is engaged in many activities to
facilitate closer international cooperation. To this end, the U.S.
government has actively participated in international research and
assessment efforts (e.g., through the IPCC), in efforts to develop and
implement a global climate change strategy (through the FCCC Conference of
the Parties and its varied subsidiary bodies and through the Climate
Technology Initiative), and by providing financial and technical assistance
to developing countries to facilitate development of mitigation and
sequestration strategies (e.g., through the Global Environment Facility
(GEF)). Bilateral and multilateral opportunities are currently being
implemented, with some designed to capitalize on the technological
capabilities of the private sector, and others to work on a government-to-
government basis.
In the existing Convention framework, the United States has seconded
technical experts to the FCCC secretariat to help implement methodological,
technical, and technological activities. U.S. experts review national
communications of other Parties and are helping to advance the development
of methodologies for inventorying national emissions.
The United States has been active in promoting next steps under the
Convention. It has encouraged all countries to take appropriate analyses of
their own circumstances before taking action--and then act on these
analyses. It has suggested--and, where possible, has demonstrated--flexible
and robust institutional systems through which actions can be taken, such
as programs to implement emission-reduction activities jointly between
Parties, and emission-trading programs. The United States has also sought
to use its best diplomatic efforts to prod those in the international
community reluctant to act, seeking to provide assurances that the issue is
critical and warrants global attention. Through these efforts, the ongoing
negotiations are expected to successfully conclude in late 1997. The
successful implementation of the Convention and a new legal instrument will
ensure that the potential hazards of climate change will never be realized.
As a major donor to the GEF, the United States has contributed
approximately $190 million to help developing countries meet the
incremental costs of protecting the global environment. Although the United
States is behind in the voluntary payment schedule agreed upon during the
GEF replenishment adopted in 1994, plans have been made to pay off these
arrears.
The principles of the U.S. development assistance strategy lie at the
heart of U.S. bilateral mitigation projects. These principles include the
concepts of conservation and cultural respect, as well as empowerment of
local citizenry. The U.S. government works primarily through the U.S.
Agency for International Development (USAID). In fact, mitigation of global
climate change is one of USAID's two global environmental priorities. Other
agencies working in the climate change field, including the Environmental
Protection Agency, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and
the Departments of Agriculture and Energy, are also active internationally.
Projects fit into various general categories, such as increasing the
efficiency of power operation and use, adopting renewable-energy
technologies, reducing air pollution, improving agricultural and livestock
practices, and decreasing deforestation and improving land use.
Perhaps none of the U.S. programs is as well known as the U.S. Country
Studies Program. The program is currently assisting fifty-five developing
countries and countries with economies in transition to market economies
with climate change studies intended to build human and institutional
capacity to address climate change. Through its Support for National Action
Plans, the program is supporting the preparation of national climate action
plans for eighteen developing countries, which will lay the foundation for
their national communication, as required by the FCCC. More than twenty-
five additional countries have requested similar assistance from the
Country Studies Program.
The United States is also committed to facilitating the commercial transfer
of energy-efficient and renewable-energy technologies that can help
developing countries achieve sustainable development. Under the auspices of
the Climate Technology Initiative, the U.S. has taken a lead role in a task
force on Energy Technology Networking and Capacity Building, the efforts of
which focus on increasing the availability of reliable climate change
technologies, developing options for improving access to data in developing
countries, and supporting experts in the field around the world. The United
States is also engaged in various other projects intended to help countries
with mitigation and adaptation issues. The International Activities chapter
focuses on the most important of these U.S. efforts.
Introduction and Overview
Since the historic gathering of representatives from 172 countries at
the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in June 1992, issues of environmental
protection have remained high on national and international priorities.
Climate change is one of the most visible of these issues--and one in which
some of the most significant progress has been made since the 1992 session.
Perhaps the crowning achievement in Rio was the adoption of the United
Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (FCCC). This Convention
represented a shared commitment by nations around the world to reduce the
potential risks of a major global environmental problem. Its ultimate
objective is to:
Achieve ј stabilization of greenhouse gas concentrations in the
atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic human
interference with the climate system. Such a level should be achieved
within a time frame sufficient to allow ecosystems to adapt naturally to
climate change, to ensure that food production is not threatened, and to
enable economic development to proceed in a sustainable manner.
However, since the 1992 Earth Summit, the global community has found
that actions to mitigate climate change will need to be more aggressive
than anticipated. At the same time, the rationale for action has proven
more compelling. Few "Annex I" countries (the Climate Convention's term for
developed countries, including Organization for Economic Cooperation and
Development (OECD) member countries and countries with economies in
transition to market economies) have demonstrated an ability to meet the
laudable, albeit nonbinding, goal of the Convention--"to return emissions
of greenhouse gases to their 1990 levels by the end of the decade." While
voluntary programs have demonstrated that substantial reductions are
achievable at economic savings or low costs, the success of these programs
has been overshadowed by lower-than-expected energy prices as well as
higher-than-expected economic growth and electricity demand, among other
factors.
Recognizing that even the most draconian measures would likely be
insufficient to reverse the growth in greenhouse gases and return U.S.
emissions to their 1990 levels by the year 2000, new U.S. efforts are
focusing most intensively on the post-2000 period. Thus, while some new
voluntary actions have already been proposed (and are included in this
report), an effort to develop a comprehensive program to address rising
U.S. greenhouse gas emissions is being developed in the context of the
ongoing treaty negotiations and will be reported in the next U.S.
communication.
In spite of difficulties in meeting a domestic goal to return emissions
to their 1990 levels, the U.S. commitment to addressing the climate change
problem remains a high priority. President Clinton, in remarks made in
November 1996, both underlined U.S. concerns and exhorted the nations of
the world to act:
“We must work to reduce harmful greenhouse gas emissions. These
gases released by cars and power plants and burning forests affect our
health and our climate. They are literally warming our planet. If they
continue unabated, the consequences will be nothing short of devastating
ј. We must stand together against the threat of global warming. A
greenhouse may be a good place to raise plants; it is no place to nurture
our children. And we can avoid dangerous global warming if we begin today
and if we begin together.”
Difficulties in meeting the "aim" of the Climate Convention prompted
the international community, gathered at the first meeting of the
Conference of the Parties to the FCCC (held in Berlin, Germany, in March
1995), to agree on a new approach to addressing the climate change problem.
At their first session, the Parties decided to negotiate a new legal
instrument containing appropriate next steps under the Convention. At the
Second Conference of the Parties (COP-2), the United States expressed its
view that the new agreement should include three main elements:
a realistic and achievable binding target (instead of the hortatory goals
and nonbinding aims of the existing Convention),
flexibility in implementation, and
the participation of developing countries.
Each of these elements was included in a Ministerial Declaration agreed
to at COP-2, and the United States expects that a legal instrument
containing these elements will be one of the outcomes from the Third
Conference of the Parties, to be held in Kyoto, Japan, in December 1997.
As international negotiations continue on a new legal commitment, the
United States is assessing options for a domestic program. The results of
this analytical effort are being used to inform the U.S. negotiating
positions, and will subsequently be used to develop compliance strategies
to meet any commitments established under the new regime.
While the Parties involved in the negotiations are determining next
steps for collective action, all countries are still actively pursuing the
programs adopted earlier in the decade to control emissions. This document
describes the current U.S. program. It represents the second formal U.S.
communication under the FCCC, as required under Articles 4.2 and 12. As
with the Climate Action Report published by the United States in 1994, it
is a "freeze frame"--a look at the current moment in time in the U.S.
program. This report does not predict additional future activities. Nor is
it intended to be a substitute for existing or future decision-making
processes--whether administrative or legislative--or for additional
measures developed by or with the private sector.
This document has been developed using the methodologies and format
agreed to at the first meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the
FCCC, and modified by the second meeting of the Conference of the Parties
and by sessions of the Convention's Subsidiary Body on Scientific and
Technological Advice and the Subsidiary Body on Implementation. The United
States assumes that this communication, like those of other countries--and
like the preceding U.S. communication--will be subject to a thorough
review, and discussed in the evaluation process for the Parties of the
Convention. Even though the measures listed in this report are not expected
to reduce U.S. emissions below 1990 levels by the year 2000, the United
States believes that many of the climate change actions being implemented
have been successful at reducing emissions, send valuable signals to the
private sector, and may be appropriate models for other countries. The U.S.
experience should also ensure that future efforts are more effective in
reversing the rising trend of emissions and returning U.S. emissions to
more environmentally sustainable levels.
The Science
The 1992 Convention effort was largely predicated on the scientific and
technical information produced by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change (IPCC) in its 1990 report. The IPCC consists of more than two
thousand of the world's best scientists with expertise in the physical,
social, and economic sciences relevant to the climate issue. The United
States stands firmly behind the IPCC's conclusions. As the actions being
taken by the United States ultimately depend on the nation's understanding
of the science, it is important to at least briefly review this information
here.
The Earth absorbs energy from the sun in the form of solar radiation.
About one-third is reflected, and the rest is absorbed by different
components of the climate system, including the atmosphere, the oceans, the
land surface, and the biota. The incoming energy is balanced over the long
term by outgoing radiation from the Earth-atmosphere system, with outgoing
radiation taking the form of long-wave, invisible infrared energy. The
magnitude of this outgoing radiation is affected in part by the temperature
of the Earth-atmosphere system.
Several human and natural activities can change the balance between the
energy absorbed by the Earth and that emitted in the form of long-wave
infrared radiation. On the natural side, these include changes in solar
radiation (the sun's energy varies by small amounts--approximately 0.1
percent over an eleven-year cycle--and variations over longer periods also
occur). They also include volcanic eruptions, injecting huge clouds of
sulfur-containing gases, which tend to cool the Earth's surface and
atmosphere over a few years. On the human-induced side, the balance can be
changed by emissions from land-use changes and industrial practices that
add or remove "heat-trapping" or "greenhouse" gases, thus changing
atmospheric absorption of radiation.
Greenhouse gases of policy significance include carbon dioxide (CO2);
methane (CH4); nitrous oxide (N2O); the chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and
their substitutes, including hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs); the long-lived
fully fluorinated hydrocarbons, such as perfluorocarbons (PFCs); and ozone
(O3). Although most of these gases occur naturally (the exceptions are the
CFCs, their substitutes, and the long-lived PFCs), the concentrations of
all of these gases are changing as a result of human activities.
For example, the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide has risen
about 30 percent since the 1700s--an increase responsible for more than
half of the enhancement of the trapping of the infrared radiation due to
human activities. In addition to their steady rise, many of these
greenhouse gases have long atmospheric residence times (several decades to
centuries), which means that atmospheric levels of these gases will return
to preindustrial levels only if emissions are sharply reduced, and even
then only after a long time. Internationally accepted science indicates
that increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases will raise atmospheric
and oceanic temperatures and could alter associated weather and circulation
patterns.
In a report synthesizing its second assessment and focusing on the
relevance of its scientific analyses to the ultimate objective of the
Convention, the IPCC concluded:
Human activities--including the burning of fossil fuels, land use, and
agriculture--are changing the atmospheric composition. Taken together, they
are projected to lead to changes in global and regional climate and climate-
related parameters, such as temperature, precipitation, and soil moisture.
Some human communities--particularly those with limited access to
mitigating technologies--are becoming more vulnerable to natural hazards
and can be expected to suffer significantly from the impacts of climate-
related changes, such as high-temperature events, floods, and droughts,
potentially resulting in fires, pest outbreaks, ecosystem loss, and an
overall reduction in the level of primary productivity.
The IPCC also concluded that, given the current trends in
emissions, global concentrations of greenhouse gases are likely to
grow significantly through the next century and beyond, and the
adverse impacts from these changes will become greater. The remainder
of this report seeks to elucidate the programs, policies, and measures
being taken in the United States to begin moving away from this trend
of increasing emissions, and to help move the world away from the
trend of globally increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases.
|Principal Conclusions of the IPCC's Second Assessment Report |
|While the basic facts about the science of climate have been |
|understood and broadly accepted for years, new information is |
|steadily emerging--and influencing the policy process. In 1995, the |
|IPCC released its Second Assessment Report, which not only validated |
|most of the IPCC's earlier findings, but because of the considerable |
|new work that had been undertaken during the five years since its |
|previous full-scale assessment, broke new ground. The report is |
|divided into three sections: physical sciences related to climate |
|impacts; adaptation and mitigation responses; and cross-cutting |
|issues, including economics and social sciences. |
|The Climate Science |
|Human activities are changing the atmospheric concentrations and |
|distributions of greenhouse gases and aerosols. |
|Global average temperatures have increased about 0.3-0.6°C (about |
|0.5-1.0°F) over the last century. |
|The ability of climate models to simulate observed trends has |
|improved--although there is still considerable regional uncertainty |
|with regard to changes. |
|The balance of evidence suggests there is a discernible human |
|influence on global climate. |
|Aerosol sulfates (a component of acid rain) offset some of the |
|warming by greenhouse gases. |
|The IPCC mid-range scenario projects an increase of 2.0°C (3.7°F) by |
|2100 (with a range of 1.0-3.5°C (about 1.8-6.3°F). |
|The average global warming projected in the IPCC mid-range scenario |
|is greater than any seen in the last ten thousand years. |
|Sea level is projected to rise (due to thermal expansion of the |
|oceans, and melting of glaciers and ice sheets) by about 50 |
|centimeters (20 inches) by 2100, with a range of 15-95 centimeters |
|(about 6-38 inches). |
|Even after a stabilization of greenhouse gas concentrations, |
|temperatures would continue to increase for several decades, and sea |
|level would continue to rise for centuries. |
|Vulnerability, Likely Impacts, and Possible Responses |
|Climate change is likely to have wide-ranging and mostly adverse |
|effects on human health. Direct and indirect effects can be expected |
|to lead to increased mortality. |
|Coastal infrastructure is likely to be extremely vulnerable. A |
|50-centimeter (20-inch) rise in sea level would place approximately |
|120 million people at risk. |
|Natural and managed ecosystems are also at risk: forests, |
|agricultural areas, and aquatic and marine life are all susceptible. |
| |
|However, adaptation and mitigation options are numerous. Significant |
|reductions in net greenhouse gas emissions are technically possible |
|and can be economically feasible, using an extensive array of |
|technologies and policy measures that accelerate technology |
|development, diffusion, and transfer. |
|Socioeconomic Issues |
|Early mitigation may increase flexibility in moving toward a |
|stabilization of atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases. |
|Economic risks of rapid abatement must be balanced against risks of |
|delay. |
|Significant "no regrets" opportunities are available in most |
|countries. Next steps must recognize equity considerations. |
|Costs of stabilization of emissions at 1990 levels in OECD countries |
|could range considerably (from a gain of $60 billion to a loss of |
|about $240 billion) over the next several decades. |
National Circumstances
In responding to the threat of global climate change, U.S. policymakers
must consider the special circumstances created by a unique blend of
challenges and opportunities. The National Circumstances chapter of this
report attempts to explain the particular situation in the United States--
including its climate, natural resources, population trends, economy,
energy mix, and political system--as a backdrop for understanding the U.S.
perspective on global climate change.
The United States is unusual in that it encompasses a wide variety of
climate conditions within its borders, from subtropical to tundra. This
diversity complicates the discussion of impacts of global climate change
within the United States because those impacts would vary widely. This
diversity also adds to U.S. emission levels, as heating and cooling demands
drive up emissions. Recent record levels of precipitation--both in snowfall
and rain--consistent with what could be expected under a changed climate,
have raised the awareness of climate impacts at the local and regional
levels, and may make it somewhat easier to predict the effects of increased
precipitation.
The United States also is uncommonly rich in land resources, both in
extent and diversity. U.S. land area totals about 931 million hectares (2.3
billion acres), including grassland pasture and range, forest, and
cropland. Forested land has been increasing, while grasslands and croplands
are slowly declining and being converted to other uses. The decline in
wetlands has slowed significantly as a result of the "no net loss" policy
being implemented.
With just over 265 million people, the United States is the third most
populous country in the world,
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