D
ott. Pettinari, many thanks for your warm welcome this evening. Good evening everyone. It is a pleasure for me to join you in this meeting. For me, this is a sort of homecoming. In the United States, as you know, weekly Rotary Club meetings are common, and the good done by service organizations like yours is seen in every U.S. community and around the globe. I am honored to be among people who understand me when I speak of community service.
View of the Earth as seen by the Apollo 17 crew traveling toward the moon.
This translunar coast photograph extends from the Mediterranean Sea area
to the Antarctica south polar ice cap. This is the first time the Apollo trajectory
made it possible to photograph the south polar ice cap. Note the heavy cloud
cover in the Southern Hemisphere. Almost the entire coastline of Africa is clearly
visible. The Arabian Peninsula can be seen at the northeastern edge of Africa.
The large island off the coast of Africa is Madagascar. The Asian mainland is on
the horizon toward the northeast.
It is not a surprise to me that your President has asked me to speak about the U.S. commitment to a safe environment.
As Rotarians, you care about the world beyond your doors. And being avid readers of the news, you will have seen great criticisms of the U.S. stewardship of the environment
But just as the news you find in your newspapers is often designed to sell newspapers, and often tells only the spectacular side of a story, I think you will find that U.S. environmental policy is much more in line with European policies than you may expect. So I think you will find my speech surprising and, at the same time, reassuring.
I would like to start my speech by asking you a couple of quick questions to gauge what you already know about the U.S. environmental story.
A Quiz on the United States
Question One – What country introduced in 2005 a $3400 tax credit for consumers purchasing green cars – Italy, Canada or the United States?
Question Two – Between the U.S. and the EU, which is doing better at limiting new greenhouse gas emissions since the Kyoto Protocol took effect in 2000?
Question Three – Which country has devoted nearly 29 billion dollars since 2001 to climate related science?
Question Four – Which world leader said “We know the surface temperature of the earth is warming... concentrations of CO2 have increased substantially and the increase is due in large part to human activity”?
The answers will, I believe surprise you.
Surprisingly, the country that introduced the tax credit for purchasers of hybrid, electric and other high mileage cars is the United States.
Even more surprisingly, in the United States between 2000 and 2004, UN statistics tell us that greenhouse gas emissions rose 1.7%, while the same emissions in the EU 25 grew by 4.9%. Only two EU countries, Lithuania and the Czech Republic, have reduced their emissions by more than 1% in this period.
On the issue of who is the world leader in climate science research, having invested $29 billion in that research, the answer again is the United States.
And the strong statement recognizing climate change was made by President Bush on June 11, 2001.
So obviously, there is a lot about our struggle for a clean environment that has not made its way into the European media, and I am proud to be able to explain the U.S. efforts in this area to you tonight.
The Creation of an Environmental Ethic
By the 1870’s, the U.S. was creating an important environmental ethic – both in our cities and in our wilderness. Three elements underscored our environmental ethic: familiarity with English formal gardens, which were kept in an artificial state of wilderness; the Native American sense of stewardship of nature, and a glorification of the role of the individual in his or her community. These three inspirations are as important in the U.S. today as they were 130 years ago. In 1872, the U.S. created the world’s first national park – Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming, Montana and Idaho – and by 1916, we had also created the world’s first national park system. That system, with over 390 units today, is the broadest in the world.
Federal Land Management
Today, the national or federal government is the major landowner in my country, owning 28% of the 2.3 billion acres of the United States. The federal government owns a majority of land in Alaska, Idaho, Nevada, Oregon and Utah. The U.S. National Park Service does not maintain all these lands – in fact, it is the smallest of four federal land management agencies. The National Park Service, though, together with three other Federal Land Management Agencies, and the Department of Defense, maintains 649 of the 650 million acres of federal land in the United States.
Environmental Stewardship Policies Today
The United States commitment to the environment is not just visible in land management – we have also taken a leadership role as a global environmental steward, and have made remarkable progress over the past 30 years in reducing pollution and protecting the environment within its borders. During this time, the U.S. economy grew by 187 percent, population grew by 39 percent, and energy consumption increased by 47 percent, yet air pollution decreased by 48 percent. At the same time, we have carried out more environmental research than any other nation, and coordinated that research between industry, universities, and government, to assure its practical applicability. The new technologies being developed in the U.S. now offer the possibility of renewable energy sources that do not contaminate the air and the water, or release greenhouse gases and destroy Earth's protective ozone layer. This research is shaping national strategies for greater energy conservation and wiser resource management and disposal. We believe that environmental stewardship is critical to the promise of a better life for people around the world.
The U.S. environmental movement, which is often seen as having its start on the first Earth Day celebration on April 22, 1970, can be summarized in five key pieces of U.S. environmental legislation:
- The National Environmental Policy Act of 1970,
- The Clean Air Act of 1970,
- The Clean Water Act of 1972,
- The Endangered Species Act of 1973,
- The Resource Conservation and Recovery Act of 1976, and
- The Superfund Law of 1980.
Today, the United States is an active partner in more than 200 international environmental treaty negotiations, including agreements to protect the ozone layer, preserve wetlands, safeguard endangered species, conserve natural resources, promote sustainable fisheries, and reduce hazardous chemicals.
Reduce, Reuse, Recycle
The United States now recycles about 30 percent of its solid waste, a percentage that includes source reduction – using less material in the first place – and composting – using degraded organic material as a fertilizer and soil conditioner. We recycle 42 percent of our paper, 55 percent of our aluminum cans and 60 percent of our steel. While the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency encourages and promotes recycling and composting of garbage, no federal law requires local communities, counties, cities, and towns to take this action. But municipalities recycle today in record numbers, often in centers run by volunteers.
Thirty Years Of Clean Air Progress
By virtually any measure, the air we breathe in the United States is cleaner today than at any time since we started monitoring air quality back in 1970. It was not until the Clean Air Act that the United States began to focus its attention on the link between air pollution and public health.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) began by focusing on six key air pollutants: ozone, particulate matter, carbon monoxide, nitrogen dioxide, sulfur dioxide, and lead. Emissions of these pollutants have been cut by more than half, with lead emissions reduced by 98 percent, volatile organic compounds 54 percent, carbon monoxide (CO) 52 percent, sulfur dioxide (SO2) 49 percent, and nitrogen oxides (NOx) 24 percent.
Today, particulate pollution is the most serious environmental threat to public health in the United States. Significantly, we have seen the biggest improvements in regions with the worst air quality problems. Between 1999 and 2003, PM2.5 levels dropped 20 percent in the Southeast, 16 percent in southern California, and 9 percent in the industrial Midwest.
The EPA’s top five programs, measured in terms of public health benefits, are:
- The removal of lead from gasoline (adopted by EPA in the late 1970s).
- The Acid Rain Program (enacted by Congress in 1990 to reduce SO2 from power plants).
- The Clean Air Interstate Rule (adopted by EPA in 2005 to further reduce SO2, as well as NOx, from power plants).
- The Non-road Diesel Rule (adopted by EPA in 2004 to reduce particulate matter and NOx from construction, farming, and other non-road equipment).
- The Heavy-duty Highway Vehicle and Diesel Sulfur Rule (adopted by EPA in 2000 to reduce particulate matter and NOx diesel trucks, buses, and other on-road vehicles).
The most recent of these rules is the Clean Air Interstate Rule (CAIR), which will dramatically reduce pollution in the eastern United States by cutting power plant emissions of SO2 by more than 70 percent and NOx by more than 60 percent. When fully implemented, CAIR will result in the greatest health benefits of any rule initiated by EPA since the late 1970s – almost $100 billion per year by 2015
U.S. Environmental Policies being presented by Consul for Public Affairs
David Bustamante at the Rotary Club Milano Ovest.
The U.S. Climate Change Vision
We all know that the United States has chosen not to sign the Kyoto Protocol. Most people do not know, however, that the U.S. was a founding signer of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the umbrella organization that convened the Kyoto meeting. The United States did not sign the Kyoto Protocol because it established vague goals for the reduction of greenhouse gases without stipulating how to meet those goals, or the penalties that would apply if they were missed. We also did not sign because the convention excluded the industrializing nations of the third world – India, China and Brazil being the best-known exclusions. These countries sit atop some of the most threatened environments in the world, and their growing industries, if not obliged to adopt environmentally friendly production method, will poison our atmosphere. Already, we foresee that the greenhouse emissions of China and India alone will surpass the emissions of developed countries by 2010. We also did not sign because, under the treaty, the targets set for us were incompatible with economic growth, which we think is the best way to solve the world’s problems. We estimate that, in order to meet Kyoto greenhouse gas goals, we would have had to cut our energy economy by one-third, costing us an average of $400 billion annually and involving the loss of 4.9 million jobs. Europe, by comparison, only needs to cut its energy use by 6.5%-8%. We can argue about whether the U.S. did the right thing by not signing a Protocol whose goals it had no intention of meeting. But I wonder if, when the nations that have signed Kyoto are called to account, they will have met their abstract and unrealistic goals.
I would like to outline for you the three primary aims of U.S. climate policy:
- To introduce new technologies for producing and using energy that can dramatically weaken the link between economic growth and the generation of greenhouse gases.
- To improve scientific tools and understanding needed to respond more effectively to the problems posed by climate change.
- To enlist the cooperation of other nations to address the entire spectrum of climate change issues.
To advance these aims, the United States spent $5.2 billion in fiscal year 2005 on climate change science research, advanced energy technologies, voluntary programs, and related international assistance – far more than any other nation. Among our technology initiatives, some of the most interesting include:
- The development of hydrogen technologies that can enable more efficient and carbon-free means of transportation and other applications.
- The design of new kinds of power plants – “FutureGen” plants – that generate power from hydrocarbons but release no carbon to the atmosphere, and renewed commitment to research on future carbon-free forms of power generation such as nuclear fusion that can be scaled to an economically significant size.
The United States has devoted nearly $29 billion to climate related science, technology, international assistance, and incentive programs – more than any other country. Our spending is coordinated within a well-defined strategic plan, developed and reviewed in consultation with the international scientific community and the National Academy of Sciences.
President Bush’s goal, stated in 2002, is to reduce our greenhouse gas intensity by 18% through the year 2012. In the State of the Union address two weeks ago, the President announced a plan to reduce gasoline usage by 20% in the next ten years to stop projected growth of carbon dioxide. This plan will effectively cancel out the annual emissions of 26 million automobiles, and prevent the build up of 600 million metric tons of CO2. And we definitely have the current capability to make these savings – we are already the world leader in the production of biofuels. We will also increase fuel mileage standards for all cars and light trucks sold in the U.S., resulting in another 5% saving in projected gasoline usage. And the President’s Advanced Energy Initiative has provided tax incentives so consumers could buy more than 250,000 fuel efficient vehicles since January 2006.
On an international level, we have launched the Asia Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate together with five countries representing 50% of the world’s economy. Over a series of economic sectors, we will work to introduce cleaner, more efficient technologies, while also fostering economic growth and poverty reduction. Through the G-8, we are implementing the 2005 Gleneagles Plan of Action for Climate Change, Clean Energy, and Sustainable Development. Through our International Technology Partnerships, we are sharing breakthroughs and advances in fusion, hydrogen, next generation nuclear power, renewable energy, energy efficiency, capture and underground storage of carbon dioxide emissions, and agricultural operations.
Our international cooperation on climate change was demonstrated just last week when we joined 112 other nations in finalizing a landmark climate change science report in Paris, as part of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, authorized under the United Nations Environmental Program and the World Meteorological Organization.
Conclusion
So in response to those who wish the U.S. would take a leadership role on issues involving the world’s environment, I am happy to report that this is already happening. We lead in science, we lead in cooperation, we lead in practical private-public partnerships, and we lead in practical applications of science. Our goals are ambitious, yet attainable. On the issue of climate change, we acknowledge that we did not sign the Kyoto Protocol, but want you to know that we are not only leaders within the Framework Convention on Climate Change, but have also done a great deal to reduce our emissions of greenhouse gases.
These policies are the result of a long term environmental commitment that unites all Americans, and can be expected to continue long into the future. And we expect that future to be bright.
Thank you.
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