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DONALD TRUMP - Le président américain a ironisé ce jeudi 28 décembre sur le réchauffement climatique, alors que le nord des Etats-Unis est balayé par une vague de froid extrême avec des températures jusqu'à -40°C.

"Dans l'est, cela pourrait être la veille du jour de l'an LA PLUS FROIDE jamais enregistrée. Peut-être qu'on pourrait utiliser un peu de ce bon vieux réchauffement climatique que notre pays, mais aucun autre pays, s'apprêtait à payer DES TRILLIONS DE DOLLARS pour s'en protéger. Couvrez-vous!", a tweeté Donald Trump.

In the East, it could be the COLDEST New Year's Eve on record. Perhaps we could use a little bit of that good old Global Warming that our Country, but not other countries, was going to pay TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS to protect against. Bundle up!
- Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) 29 décembre 2017

Le milliardaire de 71 ans s'est toujours montré sceptique sur le changement climatique, parlant même, avant d'être président, d'une "invention" de la Chine.
Avalanche de réactions d'internautes
Ce tweet a déclenché une avalanche de réactions d'internautes et de scientifiques tentant d'expliquer le changement climatique au président américain.

"Le changement climatique est très réel même s'il fait froid à l'extérieur de la Trump Tower en ce moment", a répondu sur Twitter le directeur de l'Académie des Sciences de Californie, Jon Foley. "De la même façon, il y a toujours de la faim dans le monde, même si vous venez de manger un Big Mac", a-t-il ajouté.

Believe it or not, global climate change is very real even if it's cold outside Trump Tower right now. Just like there is still hunger in the world, even if you just had a Big Mac. https://t.co/VCGyGRWGCJ
- Jon Foley (@GlobalEcoGuy) 29 décembre 2017

"En 2017, il y a eu environ trois records de chaleur aux Etats-Unis pour chaque record de froid, a renchéri la députée démocrate de l'Etat de Washington, Pramila Jayapal. La météo, ce n'est pas la même chose que le climat. Le président devrait pouvoir comprendre ça. Ce n'est pas difficile".

Selon l'Organisation météorologique mondiale (OMM), 2017 devrait être l'année la plus chaude jamais enregistrée sur l'ensemble de la planète.

Après son arrivée à la Maison Blanche, Donald Trump a retiré les Etats-Unis de l'accord de Paris sur le climat estimant qu'il détruirait des emplois industriels.

L'administration Trump a également retiré le changement climatique de la liste "des menaces" pour les Etats-Unis et relancé l'exploitation du charbon et des réserves jugées de gaz et d'huile de schiste sur des terres fédérales protégées.

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* Trump aura un arrêt de train à son nom à Jérusalem, près du mur des Lamentations

* Ce républicain en rupture avec Trump prévient qu'il sera défié s'il est de nouveau candidat en 2020

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Trump ironise sur le réchauffement climatique avec la vague de froid

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DONALD TRUMP - Le président américain a ironisé ce jeudi 28 décembre sur le réchauffement climatique, alors que le nord des Etats-Unis est balayé par une vague de froid extrême avec des températures jusqu'à -40°C. "Dans l'est, cela pourrait être la veille du jour de l'an LA PLUS FROIDE jamais enregistrée.

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Évolution mental

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Donald Trump fait évoluer sa pensée sur le réchauffement de la planète. Climatosceptique assumé, bien avant de se lancer dans la course à la Maison-Blanche, le président américain a reconnu à demi-mot, ce dimanche, la réalité des changements climatiques.

" Je crois qu'il se passe quelque chose ", a-t-il déclaré lors d'une interview pour l'émission de CBS " 60 minutes ". " Je crois que ce n'est pas un canular, il y a probablement une différence mais je ne sais pas si c'est à cause de l'homme ".

" Un concept inventé par et pour la Chine "

Pour le milliardaire républicain, cette sortie est un tournant. En 2012, il affirmait sur Twitter que le réchauffement climatique était " un concept inventé par et pour la Chine afin de pénaliser le secteur manufacturier américain ".

The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive.
- Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) 6 novembre 2012

Depuis son entrée en fonction, Donald Trump a fait sortir les Etats-Unis de l'accord de Paris, conclu lors de la COP21 en 2015 et signé par Barack Obama. Quelques mois plus tard, il a abrogé le plan climat de son prédécesseur démocrate, qui prévoyait notamment la fermeture des centrales à charbon, fortement émettrices de gaz à effet de serre, dans le pays. Au cours de l'été 2018, il a même annoncé un plan de relance de ces mêmes centrales.

" Je ne veux pas perdre des millions d'emplois "

En décembre dernier, il avait encore ironisé sur le sujet. " Dans l'Est (des Etats-Unis), cela pourrait être le début d'année le plus froid jamais enregistré. Peut-être pourrions-nous utiliser un peu de ce bon vieux réchauffement climatique pour lequel nous payons - mais pas les autres pays - des milliards de milliards de dollars ", avait-il lancé dans un tweet.

In the East, it could be the COLDEST New Year's Eve on record. Perhaps we could use a little bit of that good old Global Warming that our Country, but not other countries, was going to pay TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS to protect against. Bundle up!
- Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) 29 décembre 2017

Sur ce dernier point, la position du milliardaire n'a pas changé. " Je ne veux pas donner des milliards et des milliards de dollars et je ne veux pas perdre des millions d'emplois ", a-t-il déclaré dimanche sur CBS avant de poursuivre, sibyllin : " je ne nie pas le changement climatique, mais cela pourrait très bien s'inverser ".

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Réchauffement climatique : Donald Trump admet " qu'il se passe quelque chose "

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Donald Trump fait évoluer sa pensée sur le réchauffement de la planète. Climatosceptique assumé, bien avant de se lancer dans la course à la Maison-Blanche, le président américain a reconnu à demi-mot, ce dimanche, la réalité des changements climatiques. " Je crois qu'il se passe quelque chose ", a-t-il déclaré lors d'une interview pour l'émission de CBS " 60 minutes ".

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Barack Obama entend peser de tout son poids dans les négociations sur le réchauffement climatique. L'ancien Président américain, lors d'une conférence à Milan, l'a bien montré, alors que se tenait à Bonn une grande réunion sur l'application de l'accord de Paris.

Une détermination qui tranche avec l'attitude extrêmement récalcitrante de l'administration Trump.

Barack Obama :
"Certains des flux migratoires vers l'Europe sont provoqués non seulement par les conflits mais aussi dans certains endroits par des pénuries de nourriture qui vont s'aggraver si le changement climatique continue. Donc si nous n'agissons pas pour ralentir et finalement stopper ces tendances, les migrations, qui ont mis un tel fardeau sur l'Europe, vont juste continuer à empirer".

"People aren't as familiar w the impact of cows and methane" BarackObama</a> on climate change <a href="https://twitter.com/SEEDSandCHIPS">SEEDSandCHIPS#sac17 changeourfood</a> <a href="https://t.co/6pVpDGgJO4">pic.twitter.com/6pVpDGgJO4</a></p>- Diane Hatz (dianehatz) May 9, 2017

A Washington, une réunion prévue sur le sujet a été annulée sans raison. Donald Trump, qui avait promis d'"annuler" l'accord de Paris, devrait finalement prendre position avant le prochain G7 prévu en Italie à la fin mai.

La Chine de son côté a de nouveau affiché sa détermination à défendre l'accord de Paris, qu'elle a fortement contribué à construire avec Barack Obama.

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Etats-Unis contre réchauffement climatique : Barack Obama prend le relais

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Barack Obama entend peser de tout son poids dans les négociations sur le réchauffement climatique. L'ancien Président américain, lors d'une conférence à Milan, l'a bien montré, alors que se tenait à Bonn une grande réunion sur l'application de l'accord de Paris. Une détermination qui tranche avec l'attitude extrêmement récalcitrante de l'administration Trump.

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En déplacement sur l'île de Midway, située en plein océan Pacifique, le président américain en a profité, via une vidéo publiée sur le site internet du New York Times, pour mettre en garde les sceptiques contre l'immobilisme en matière de lutte contre le réchauffement climatique. " Ce qui rend l'action difficile en faveur du climat, c'est qu'il ne s'agit pas d'une catastrophe instantanée, a-t-il déclaré. C'est un événement lent qui évolue au jour le jour, que les gens ne connaissent pas et ne voient pas. " Au passage, Barack Obama réaffirme qu'il s'agit pour lui de la plus grande menace à long terme pour le monde.

Un bilan mi-plein, mi-vide

Le président américain en fin de mandat revient sur les actions menées durant sa présidence, il confie notamment qu'il a pu convaincre ses concitoyens de la véracité du changement et de la nécessité d'agir. Il s'y présente également comme le courtier central des accords de la Cop21, qui a permis d'engager tous les États dans la lutte contre le réchauffement. Un résultat rendu possible grâce à son appel lors la conférence de Copenhague. Malgré l'échec, il est convaincu que son appel à l'engagement des pays en voie de développement sur ce traité a alors permis aux États de réaliser l'importance d'un accord contraignant pour tous, avant de s'engager par la suite à Paris. Obama revient également sur ses échecs, notamment en politique intérieure. Sur le fait d'avoir, par ses appels répétés, polarisé le débat sur la question, et divisé jusque dans son camp.

Combat de tranchées

Privé de l'appui des chambres parlementaires, Obama évoque les astuces qui ont permis d'être plus strict concernant les polluants, en faisant appliquer plus fermement le Clean Air Act de 1970, qui donne le pouvoir à l'agence de l'environnement d'édicter des règlements sur les polluants dangereux. Ce texte permet notamment la fermeture de centaines de centrales à charbon. Dans un pays où les lobbies économiques sont tout-puissants, Obama insiste de manière ferme : " Nous devons être honnêtes face aux gens qui vivent du charbon, leur dire : "L'économie change, l'énergie aussi. Cela sera vrai ici comme dans le reste du monde" ", explique-t-il.

Prise de conscience tardive

Pourtant, Obama ne faisait pas office d'évangéliste vert dans le camp démocrate, Al Gore ou même John Kerry semblaient plus en pointe que lui sur ces combats. Cependant le président américain n'a eu de cesse de s'informer au cours de ses mandats. Durant cette interview, il raconte comment un de ses proches collaborateurs lui montre des graphiques " terrifiants " sur le réchauffement. " Imaginez que le changement du régime de mousson pourrait affecter plus d'un milliard de personnes. Imaginez les mouvements de populations que cela peut entraîner et leurs conséquences. "

Le président Obama pointe alors la nécessité d'une action commune, d'où le rapprochement avec la Chine sur ce point, bien qu'il reconnaisse sa prise de conscience individuelle. " Ils se rendent compte que la pollution peut rendre leur pays instable. Au niveau où ils en sont, c'est devenu un sujet sensible. " Pour lui, " cet appui permet d'inviter les autres nations émergentes à mettre des choses en œuvre, pour passer directement à l'économie du XXIe siècle ".

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Obama se dit "terrifié" par les effets du réchauffement climatique

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En déplacement sur l'île de Midway, située en plein océan Pacifique, le président américain en a profité, via une vidéo publiée sur le site internet du New York Times, pour mettre en garde les sceptiques contre l'immobilisme en matière de lutte contre le réchauffement climatique.

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C'était l'élément central de la stratégie de l'ancien président Barack Obama pour lutter contre le réchauffement climatique. Le chef de l'Agence américaine de la protection de l'environnement (EPA) a annoncé qu'il allait signer mardi un projet d'abrogation de la loi sur l'énergie propre.

" Voilà le message du président : la guerre contre le charbon est terminée ", a déclaré lundi Scott Pruitt, un climatosceptique revendiqué qui a souvent combattu les lois environnementales quand il était Attorney General de l'Oklahoma. " Demain, à Washington, je signerai un projet de réglementation pour abroger le Clean Power Plan (CPP) de la précédente administration (...) ", a-t-il poursuivi. L'administration Obama a, selon lui, utilisé le plan Énergie propre pour désigner " des vainqueurs et des perdants ", c'est-à-dire faire pencher la balance en faveur de certains producteurs d'énergie au détriment d'autres.

Les organisations écologistes ont critiqué l'annonce de l'EPA et fait l'éloge du CPP, ensemble de normes en matière d'émissions de gaz qu'Obama avait imposé pour réduire la pollution des centrales thermiques - principaux émetteurs de gaz à effet de serre - de 32 % d'ici 2030, par rapport au niveau de 2005. Le projet de l'EPA, dont Reuters a pu prendre connaissance vendredi, ne précise pas si l'agence à l'intention de remplacer le CPP après son abrogation pour réguler les émissions de gaz à effet de serre. Elle dit ne pas avoir pris de décision à ce stade, mais promet de lancer prochainement une consultation.
(Avec Reuters)

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Réchauffement climatique: la loi sur l'énergie propre de Barack Obama sera abrogée

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C'était l'élément central de la stratégie de l'ancien président Barack Obama pour lutter contre le réchauffement climatique. Le chef de l'Agence américaine de la protection de l'environnement (EPA) a annoncé qu'il allait signer mardi un projet d'abrogation de la loi sur l'énergie propre.

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Aide pour définir global warming

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The planet is warming and human activity is the primary cause. Learn about the science and consequences of global warming -- and the practical solutions we have at hand to address this global threat.

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In his State of the Union Address on 20 January, US President Barack Obama said that climate change is the greatest threat to future generations. He also said that last year's climate change announcements by China and the US provide hope that the world will reach agreement to protect the planet in Paris this year. Excerpts from the speech related to climate change:

No challenge - no challenge - poses a greater threat to future generations than climate change.

2014 was the planet's warmest year on record. Now, one year doesn't make a trend, but this does - 14 of the 15 warmest years on record have all fallen in the first 15 years of this century.

I've heard some folks try to dodge the evidence by saying they're not scientists; that we don't have enough information to act. Well, I'm not a scientist, either. But you know what - I know a lot of really good scientists at NASA, and NOAA, and at our major universities. The best scientists in the world are all telling us that our activities are changing the climate, and if we do not act forcefully, we'll continue to see rising oceans, longer, hotter heat waves, dangerous droughts and floods, and massive disruptions that can trigger greater migration, conflict, and hunger around the globe. The Pentagon says that climate change poses immediate risks to our national security. We should act like it.

That's why, over the past six years, we've done more than ever before to combat climate change, from the way we produce energy, to the way we use it. That's why we've set aside more public lands and waters than any administration in history. And that's why I will not let this Congress endanger the health of our children by turning back the clock on our efforts.

I am determined to make sure American leadership drives international action. In Beijing, we made an historic announcement - the United States will double the pace at which we cut carbon pollution, and China committed, for the first time, to limiting their emissions. And because the world's two largest economies came together, other nations are now stepping up, and offering hope that, this year, the world will finally reach an agreement to protect the one planet we've got.

The full remarks of President Barack Obama can be found here.

Image: White House

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President Obama: Climate Change Greatest Threat to Future Generations | UNFCCC

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In his State of the Union Address on 20 January, US President Barack Obama said that climate change is the greatest threat to future generations. He also said that last year's climate change announcements by China and the US provide hope that the world will reach agreement to protect the planet in Paris this year.

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The Trump Administration's Climate Change Plan Might Make It Worse

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The root of the issue is simple: the Trump administration has no interest in fighting climate change.

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The Trump administration's attempt to reverse President Barack Obama's most sweeping climate regulation rests on a legally risky strategy - redoing the calculations of how much the rule would cost and who would benefit.

The Environmental Protection Agency's proposed replacement is expected to downplaythe money that people and businesses would save from using less electricity, a key feature of the Obama-era greenhouse rule for power plants. People tracking the issue also expect that the agency will count only a fraction of the improvements in public health from reduced smog and soot pollution, and won't consider any benefits from slowing climate change outside the U.S.

Story Continued Below

The upshot: The EPA under Trump will argue now that the Obama administration's rule had more costs and fewer benefits than stated, a change to help improve the comparison when it unveils its own, much less ambitious power plant proposal as soon as next week.

The Obama administration had estimated that benefits from its 2015 rule would outstrip costs - $26 billion to $45 billion - by 2030.

Supporters of the Obama version say those net benefits could be even greater now, because states are on track to meet the climate goals and the costs of clean energy have continued to plummet. And they warn that repealing the regulation could keep older, more expensive coal-fired power plants in operation, adding to consumers' costs.

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The math could be crucial to the success or failure of a number of Trump rules. That could make the rollbacks legally vulnerable when environmental advocates and states sueto overturn Trump's action, critics of the new proposals say.

"They are cooking the books on technical analysis to try to justify preconceived conclusions that these regulations are bad," said David Doniger, the senior strategic director of the Natural Resources Defense Council's climate program who was influential in the Obama administration's crafting of the original EPA rule.

The EPA did not respond to a request for comment on Wednesday.

Trump administration lawyers reviewing the replacement are already struggling with how to defend a rule that could cost electricity users money but would not do much to address climate change or air pollution, according to a person aware of conversations between the White House and the Justice Department. DOJ would be charged with defending the rule in court.

POLITICO has examined a portion of the agency's unpublished draft of the new rule, which would allow states to write their own modest regulations for coal plants or even let plant operators seek to opt out entirely, according to a source with knowledge of the broader proposal.

The proposed rewrite of the power plant rule is part of a pattern: Critics say similarly fuzzy math underlies other Trump administration proposals to reverse or stymie action on climate change, such as a recent plan by the EPA and Department of Transportation to halt a planned tightening of fuel efficiency standards for cars and trucks.

Sean Donahue, an environmental lawyer who has represented groups like the Environmental Defense Fund, said he would expect a court to be "very skeptical" of any effort that looks as though the EPA is trying to evade its obligation to regulate greenhouse gases. But he conceded that will depend on the details of the agency's power plant proposal.

"If it were one or two technical judgments where there's a difference between this administration and the last one, or this administration and prior consistent practice, that would be one thing," Donahue said. "But it's many, many things, all pointing the same way, all pointing toward rolling back greenhouse gas mitigation efforts."

Trump has repeatedly expressed doubts about man-made climate change, and much of his Cabinet shares a similar view. In contrast, the federal government's own scientific assessment finds that human-caused climate change will not only raise temperatures but also make extreme weather more dangerous and lift sea levels by one to four feet by the end of the century.

Kate Larsen, director of economic research firm Rhodium Group, said the Trump administration's justifications for unraveling climate change policies are symptomatic of its broader governing principles.

"A decision we make today is narrowly focused on the impacts to myself and my immediate neighbor in the next week, but you're not taking into account impacts next year and the following year to yourself, your neighbor, the entire community," she said.

Environmental experts are also scrutinizing the auto rule proposal, released earlier this month, which would freeze the Obama administration's aggressive fuel economy standards after 2020 and dial back EPA greenhouse gas rules to match.

The EPA and DOT's National Highway Traffic Safety Administration argued that the freeze would save billions of dollars in costs. Critics say the administration overestimated compliance costs of the Obama-era auto targets by as much as fourfold, which could significantly tip the cost-benefit analysis in their favor. Another claim that the Trump rollback would save more than 1,000 lives per year - yielding benefits of $77 billion - has also drawn skepticism.

On Tuesday, EPA released a June memo that showed agency staff criticizing a number of "unrealistic" aspects of NHTSA's modeling. They disagreed with the proposal's fatality figures, with EPA staff estimating deaths would increase slightly under the freeze. And they thought the rule overestimated compliance costs and the time needed to recoup those costs in fuel savings, all factors that boosted benefits and lowered costs for the proposed freeze. Both EPA and NHTSA dismissed the memo as only one part of a complex review process.

The administration and industry groups have blasted the Obama administration's use of "co-benefits" - the benefits in improved health or reduced pollution that arise even when they're not the primary aim of a regulation. (One example: Cutting coal plants' carbon dioxide pollution under the power plant regulation would not do much directly to improve people's health, but it would reduce smog.) But Donahue argued that Trump's regulators sometimes lean on co-benefits to help build the case for their rollbacks.

For example, NHTSA's modeling credits changes in consumer behavior as the overwhelming factor behind all the lives that the Trump administration contends its auto rollback would save. The agencies argue that under the previous Obama rule, drivers would be more likely to remain in older, more dangerous cars than purchase more expensive, safer ones.

That "would seem to be a co-benefits argument, since the EPA doesn't have, and NHTSA doesn't have, the authority to regulate used cars," said Donahue, who called the paradox "sort of entertaining."

Counting co-benefits is a long-standing practice for federal regulators, but energy industry groups and Republican state officials grew incensed by the Obama administration's use of it to justify major regulations.

"The co-benefits thing has ballooned into the biggest scandal in environmental regulation," said the conservative Competitive Enterprise Institute's Myron Ebell, who led Trump's post-election transition team at EPA. "You get very small direct benefits, but you make up, essentially, a lot of co-benefits."

Still, he contended that the EPA's withdrawal of Obama's power plant rule would eliminate a huge amount of costs in the coming years, saying Obama's regulation represented "just the first emissions cuts."

"There were going to be more beyond that if the Obama administration had been succeeded by the Clinton administration," Ebell said. He added: "By cutting it off in the way that they're doing, we're avoiding immense future costs."

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Fuzzy math could doom Trump's attack on Obama climate rule

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The Trump administration's attempt to reverse President Barack Obama's most sweeping climate regulation rests on a legally risky strategy - redoing the calculations of how much the rule would cost and who would benefit. The Environmental Protection Agency's proposed replacement is expected to downplaythe money that people and businesses would save from using less electricity, a key feature of the Obama-era greenhouse rule for power plants.

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BILLINGS, Mont. (AP) - The Trump administration is advancing a proposal that would replace President Barack Obama's principal attempt to cut U.S. greenhouse gas emissions with a new rule expected to go easier on the ailing coal industry.

The Environmental Protection Agency disclosed Tuesday that it sent the new rule to the White House for review. The document itself was not released, but President Donald Trump has been outspoken in his desire to prop up coal by rolling back what he considers burdensome regulations.

Burning coal to generate electricity is one of the primary sources of greenhouse gases blamed for climate change.

The submission of the rule to the White House coincided with former coal industry lobbyist Andrew Wheeler taking the helm of the EPA, following last week's resignation of Administrator Scott Pruitt amid multiple ethics scandals.

It also comes amid a global heat wave that's seen record-breaking temperatures across portions of the Northern Hemisphere.

Wheeler, like Pruitt, has expressed skepticism about the extent to which coal, oil and gas emissions drive climate change, something mainstream science says is indisputable fact.

Paul Wapner with American University in Washington, D.C., said Trump appears intent on dismantling the anchor-piece of Obama's domestic response to climate change, after already reversing Obama's biggest international achievement on that front by pulling the U.S. out of the Paris climate accord.

"You remove those two pieces and basically the U.S. doesn't have a climate plan," said Wapner, a professor of global environmental politics. "It opens the door for other countries now to cut back on their own domestic efforts. This will certainly provide an excuse if another country is looking for it."

The new rule is expected to shift the focus on reducing climate emissions, dropping the industrywide mandates of the Obama era and instead encouraging improvements in efficiency at individual power plants, said Jeff Holmstead, former EPA assistant administrator and now an attorney for the energy industry.

Holmstead acknowledged such an approach would result in fewer emission reductions and said the benefits to the struggling coal industry would be limited.

"At the margin it may be helpful, but I don't think this was intended to be, nor will it be, a big shot in the arm for coal," he said.

EPA spokeswoman Molly Block said in a statement that the agency intends to move expeditiously on the replacement rule. She did not provide a timeline.

The EPA said it would seek public comment on the matter only after the White House review is completed.

Nearly 200 countries have committed to combat global warming by reducing carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming.

Obama sought to cut U.S. carbon dioxide emissions to 32 percent below 2005 levels by 2030, largely by reducing pollution from coal-fired power plants. The emission cuts also were expected to improve public health by eliminating 90,000 asthma attacks and up to 3,600 premature deaths a year.

Under Trump, the EPA declared last year that the old rule exceeded federal law by setting emissions standards that power plants could not reasonably meet. In December, the agency announced it would craft a replacement plan to limit greenhouse gas emissions from the electric utility sector.

The U.S. Supreme Court had put Obama's plan on hold in 2016 following a legal challenge by industry and coal-friendly states.

Nevertheless the Obama plan helped drive a wave of retirements of coal-fired plants, which also have been squeezed by competition from cheap natural gas and renewable power and energy conservation mandates adopted by many states.

___

Follow Matthew Brown on Twitter at https://twitter.com/MatthewBrownAP

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Trump replacement for Obama climate plan moves forward

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BILLINGS, Mont. (AP) - The Trump administration is advancing a proposal that would replace President Barack Obama's principal attempt to cut U.S. greenhouse gas emissions with a new rule expected to go easier on the ailing coal industry. The Environmental Protection Agency disclosed Tuesday that it sent the new rule to the White House for review.

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G W Bush Research Initiative 2001

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NOTE: The following is one of a series of case studies produced by the Union of Concerned Scientists' Scientific Integrity Program between 2004 and 2010 to document the abuses highlighted in our 2004 report, Scientific Integrity in Policy Making.

Since taking office, the George W. Bush administration has consistently sought to undermine the view held by the vast majority of climate scientists that human-caused emissions of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases are making a discernible contribution to global warming. ¹ Despite promises by the president that "my Administration's climate change policy will be science-based," ² the past several years have seen widespread political interference in the work of federal climate scientists, edits to official scientific documents and a general attempt to foster uncertainty about robust scientific conclusions.

After coming to office, the administration asked the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) to review the findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and provide further assessment of climate science's "certainties and uncertainties." ³ In 2001 the NAS panel rendered a strong opinion affirming the conclusions of the IPCC and stating that "Greenhouse gases are accumulating in Earth's atmosphere as a result of human activities, causing surface air temperatures and subsurface ocean temperatures to rise." ⁴

Also in 2001, President George W. Bush established the U.S. Climate Change Research Initiative (CCRI). One of the initiative's two main priorities was to study "areas of uncertainty" in global climate change science. ⁵

In May 2002, President Bush expressed disdain for a State Department report ⁶ to the United Nations that pointed to a clear human role in the accumulation of heat-trapping gases and detailed the likely negative consequences of climate change; the president called it "a report put out by the bureaucracy." ⁷ In September 2002, the administration removed a section on climate change from the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) annual air pollution report, ⁸ even though the climate issue had been discussed in the report in each of the preceding five years.

The American Geophysical Union (AGU), the world's largest organization of earth scientists, released a strong statement in 2003 describing human-caused disruptions of Earth's climate. ⁹ "Human activities are increasingly altering the Earth's climate," the AGU statement declared. Yet Bush administration spokespersons continued to contend that uncertainties in climate science were too great to warrant mandatory action to slow emissions. ¹⁰

Scientists were also largely excluded from internal policy discussions relating to climate change. "This administration seems to want to make environmental policy at the White House," an EPA scientist said. "I suppose that is their right. But one has to ask: on the basis of what information is this policy being promulgated? What views are being represented? Who is involved in the decision making? What kind of credible expertise is being brought to bear?" ¹¹ The Bush administration often "does not even invite the EPA into the discussion" on climate change issues, the scientist said.

Dr. Rosina Bierbaum, a Clinton administration appointee to the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) who also served during the first year of the Bush administration, also said that science was kept out of the process of policymaking on the topic of climate change. From the start of the Bush years, Bierbaum said, "The scientists [who] knew the most about climate change at OSTP were not allowed to participate in deliberations on the issue within the White House inner circle." ¹²

Through such consistent tactics and a focus on uncertainty, the Bush administration has avoided fashioning any policies that would significantly reduce the threat implied by those findings.

The discussion may have changed with the February 2007 release of a report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), made up of hundreds of scientists from 113 countries, which declared that "human-generated greenhouse gases account for most of the global rise in temperatures over the past half-century." The New York Times quoted Achim Steiner, executive director of the United Nations Environment Program, as saying "Feb. 2 [2007] will be remembered as the date when uncertainty was removed as to whether humans had anything to do with climate change on this planet." ¹³

The 2007 report Atmosphere of Pressure, by the Union of Concerned Scientists and the Government Accountability Project, extensively documents Bush administration efforts to manipulate the work of federal climate scientists and exercise strict control over which scientists are allowed to talk to the media and which scientific results are communicated to the public. ¹⁴

1. This page contains material excerpted from the 2004 UCS Report, Scientific Integrity in Policymaking.

2. White House, President's Statement on Climate Change (July 13, 2001).

3. National Academy of Sciences, Commission on Geosciences, Environment and Resources, Climate Change Science: An Analysis of Some Key Questions, 2001.

4. Ibid.

5. U.S. Climate Change Science Program. 2003. The Climate Change Research Initiative. Washington, DC. Accessed October 25, 2006.

6. US Climate Action Report, Department of State, May 2002.

7. K.Q. Seelye, "President Distances Himself from Global Warming Report," New York Times, June 5, 2002.

8. Past EPA Air Trends Reports can be found at http://www.epa.gov/airtrends/reports.html; the 2001 report is the first Summary Report that doesn't discuss climate change.

9. American Geophysical Union, Human Impacts on Climate, December 2003. Accessed March 13, 2007.

10. P. Dobriansky, "Only New Technology Can Halt Climate Change," Financial Times, December 1, 2003.

11. Author interview with EPA scientist, name withheld on request, January 2004.

12. As quoted in N. Thompson, "Science friction: The growing-and dangerous-divide between scientists and the GOP," Washington Monthly, July/August 2003. Accessed March 13, 2007.

13. Rosenthal, E. and Revkin, A.C., Science Panel Calls Global Warming "Unequivocal," New York Times, February 2, 2007. Accessed March 13, 2007.

14. Union of Concerned Scientists and Government Accountability Project. 2007. Atmosphere of Pressure.

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Since taking office, the George W. Bush administration has consistently sought to undermine the view held by the vast majority of climate scientists that human-caused emissions of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases are making a discernible contribution to global warming.

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GW bush et the paris climate

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The Paris climate talks are expected to conclude next month with a celebrated new international accord ratcheting down greenhouse gas pollution from the world's richest and poorest countries. It could be a Kumbaya moment for President Barack Obama and his contemporaries as they tout their work trying to save the planet.

But someone else also deserves some of the credit for what's coming from the French capital: George W. Bush.

Story Continued Below

You read that right. The very same Republican president who doubted global warming science and fought new Environmental Protection Agency climate policies all the way to the Supreme Court merits a spot in the history books for kick-starting the very same negotiations that are about to bear fruit in Paris.

That may come as a shock considering modern-day Republicans are bent on derailing the Paris negotiations and overturning pretty much all of Obama's green agenda. But Bush did indeed have a big imprint near the end of his presidency - at a tropical resort on the Indonesian island of Bali. The president himself wasn't there for the late 2007 negotiations. In fact, for two long weeks as the talks lolled along, the U.S. administration actually served as a convenient punching bag for pent-up global diplomatic futility. Al Gore, fresh off accepting his Nobel Peace Prize in Norway, had flown halfway around the world to deliver a speech digging at Bush and urging the negotiators to "save an open, large, blank space" in their documents for the next U.S. president to sign. On the conference floor, typical decorum disappeared when Bush officials were loudly booed in the session's closing hours.

Yet what emerged from all that chaos stands today as perhaps the most important breakthrough in more than 20 years of international global warming talks. For the first time ever, countries of all shapes, sizes and economic means pledged to pony up commitments to address global warming. The agreement came with a very wonky sounding name - the Bali Action Plan - and it provided only a very rough outline of where future negotiations would need to go. But what the Bush administration helped create in Bali stands to this day because it eliminated perhaps the biggest political albatross blocking major action in the United States and around the world on international climate policy: Finally, fast-growing developing countries like China, Brazil, India and South Africa were on record saying they would submit cleanup plans of their own.

That small flame lit in Bali has several times been nearly extinguished. Outsized expectations surrounding Obama - fueled by his own Nobel award less than a year into his first term - nearly capsized the entire U.N. process when the president and more than 100 other world leaders traveled to Copenhagen in 2009 aiming to wrap up a major new agreement. They swung and missed in Denmark, and it took two more years before negotiators could get the original Bali game plan back on track during another climate conference in Durban, South Africa.

There are still devilish details to be worked out in Paris on how to induce developing countries to make emission reduction pledges through tens of billions of dollars in technical help that kick-starts their use of cleaner sources of energy and their adaptation to an already changing climate. The foreign aid is also designed to get countries to make even stronger commitments that can be both measured and verified. But at its fundamental core, the concept enshrined in Bali that all countries will engage collectively in the climate crusade is the strongest sign yet that the upcoming talks in Paris will be a success.

"I very much look back at Bali as a turning point," said Yvo de Boer, the former top U.N. climate official who helped lead the Indonesian conference. "In fact, it's often surprised me how often people have forgotten that turning point and its significance."

For outsiders, deciphering the meaning of a U.N. climate conference is no easy feat. Even experienced eyes often can be overwhelmed by the legal jargon, technocratic acronyms and political rhetoric that don't easily translate into everyday English. These summits have taken place annually since 1995 and often the host country is in desperate need of some kind of accomplishment on paper to show the whole affair was worth it. Often what they end up touting sounds eerily similar to what was widely trumpeted as a victory in an earlier year.

But the truth is that each session builds on its predecessors - and there's also all manner of extra grunt work happening at side meetings around the world and in more formal gatherings every couple of months at U.N. climate headquarters in the old West German capital of Bonn.

On occasion, a U.N. conference can become something bigger than itself. The treaty that started it all was negotiated at the Rio Earth Summit in 1992; George H.W. Bush, eager to campaign as the "environmentalist president," traveled to Brazil to sign it. In a sign of just how different times were, the Senate ratified the treaty in October of that year without any objections. Bush was nonetheless booted from office a month later.

Eager to turn international climate policy from a voluntary mission to a mandatory one, Bush's successor, President Bill Clinton, signed off in 1995 on the "Berlin Mandate," which declared that only developed countries like the United States, the United Kingdom, Japan and Canada were legally bound to reduce their emissions, while developing nations, including China and India, got a pass. Two years later in Japan's ancient capital, Gore helped negotiate the Kyoto Protocol that put the Berlin language into a treaty. The U.S. did score some big wins aimed at making the agreement more flexible, including broad coverage of the six most potent greenhouse gases, rather than just carbon dioxide, and authorization of a cap-and-trade system so industry could make the most economically palatable emission reductions.

But Kyoto was still a political disaster. The Senate had already voted unanimously 95-0 on a resolution from Sens. Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.) and Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.) vowing never to ratify a treaty that did economic harm to the U.S. and disapproving of any international climate agreement that exempted developing countries.

Reflecting on Kyoto, several former Clinton negotiators admitted they erred in their push to get developing countries to do more than they were willing to do. After all, China, India and other similar nations blamed the West for causing climate change in the first place through decades of economic growth via unregulated fossil fuel consumption.

"You could cut the hostility in the room with a knife," said Stuart Eizenstat, who led the U.S. delegation during the Kyoto talks. "We completely struck out with developing countries."

"The Kyoto Protocol was a little too fast and too complicated," added Daniel Bodansky, a former Clinton-era State Department climate coordinator. "It proved to be a false start."

While Clinton signed Kyoto, he never submitted it to the Senate for ratification. Still, George W. Bush took the brunt of the political blowback when he pulled the U.S. completely out of all talks related to the 1997 agreement negotiated by his predecessor. International ire only grew with media reports that the Republican White House populated with former oil industry officials had been censoring government science on climate change, as well as Bush's backtrack from his own 2000 presidential campaign pledge to enact the first-ever cap on U.S. greenhouse gas emissions from power plants.

Bush didn't relent on climate issues in a substantive way until 2007. By then, Democrats were in control of both chambers of Congress for the first time under the GOP administration, and cap-and-trade advocate John McCain was seen as one of the leading contenders for the Republican presidential nomination.

International pressure on the U.S. from its allies was growing to map out a different path. "When Bush came in and said we're not going to do Kyoto, the obvious question was: What's your alternative?" said Harlan Watson, who served as a lead Bush administration climate change negotiator.

In Bali, consecutive all-night talks resulted in an agreement in which rich nations agreed to set up new mechanisms to help poor nations adapt to climate change and build new clean energy infrastructure. It also "really launched the seriousness of this idea of breaking down the firewall" between developed and developing countries, Watson said.

Close observers inside the U.S. were even caught a bit off guard by the change. Doubts were widespread about the seriousness behind the Bush team's motivations. "The environmentalists and a lot of Democrats just crapped on us," George David Banks, a former senior Bush White House environmental aide, recalled. "They said we weren't being ambitious enough. That we'd undermined the U.N. framework. It was a step back from Kyoto. But it was pretty obvious there was just no way. If you were concerned about the climate issue, just because of the math and the increase in emission levels [counting the world's major economies], you had to do something different."

The negotiations since Bali have been anything but smooth. In Copenhagen, Obama and other world leaders saved face amid outsized expectations they could have left that conference with the makings of a legally binding treaty. Instead, they got a more nuanced accord in which rich and poor nations alike promised to keep making pledges on their environmental plans. They punted until later the actual legal framework that would tie the whole thing together - a promise that is finally coming to pass in Paris.

Considering what's happened since Bali, Banks credited the Obama administration for its adherence to those original 2007 goals and agreed that the Democratic administration's likely success wouldn't have come without Bush's work.

"We were able to break ground for them that they were able to exploit later," he said.

Even some greens credit Bush's team with getting the ball rolling and teeing up Paris. "They do deserve credit, coming from a terrible place, undermining the system, to getting things done," said Kalee Kreider, an environmental group veteran who had been a traveling Gore aide at the Bali talks. "Usually some of these [U.N. conferences] are more about mechanics. And some of them are political tipping points. That was definitely a tipping point moment."

That Bush could have played such an important role in setting the stage for Paris is a fact lost on the current crop of Republicans. Many leading GOP lawmakers reject mainstream climate science and attack Obama's agenda at every turn. Earlier this month, they even approved a pair of resolutions aimed at overturning the president's signature emission rules for power plants. Republicans have also vowed to use every tool at their disposal to undermine the Paris climate talks that their most recent president helped to launch.

"There is a lot of Republican criticism of Paris," said Nigel Purvis, a Clinton-era climate diplomat, "which is ironic because the Paris architecture is the architecture that conservatives said we needed."

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Who gets credit for climate accord? W, that's who

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The Paris climate talks are expected to conclude next month with a celebrated new international accord ratcheting down greenhouse gas pollution from the world's richest and poorest countries. It could be a Kumbaya moment for President Barack Obama and his contemporaries as they tout their work trying to save the planet.

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Clinton et trump diff avis

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Yes, climate change came up during the debate but there was little substantive discussion of energy or environment. Rick Wilking/Reuters

Climate change did not come up in the first presidential debate - well, not in any real sense. Hillary Clinton jabbed at Donald Trump for claiming that "The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive." He denied that he said it, but his tweet on November 6, 2012 says otherwise. Later Trump chided Clinton that climate change is not as important "as you think, as your president thinks."

The fact is that this issue is not likely to come up in the debates - it barely registered in the primaries and did not come up in the 2012 presidential debates - though some in the media have called for more attention. If it were to come up, would it make any difference? After all, the two sides have made their positions clear, and they could not be more different.

Hillary Clinton's position seems a continuation of her predecessor, Barack Obama, while Donald Trump's position seems a repeat of the Reagan administration of the early 1980s. If history is to be repeated, Trump's anti-regulation positions on environment and energy could actually backfire and strengthen the environmental agenda he professes to disdain.

Miles apart

Clinton calls climate change " an urgent threat and a defining challenge of our time" and has vowed to defend the EPA Clean Power Plan to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from power plants. She's said she would deliver on the commitments made at the Paris COP21 climate conference to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by up to 30 percent in 2025 relative to 2005 levels and to put the country on a path to cut emissions more than 80 percent by 2050.

To do this, she has promised to make America into "the world's clean energy superpower " by increasing the installation of renewable energy, improving buildings' energy efficiency and reducing American oil consumption through cleaner fuels and more efficient cars, boilers, ships and trucks.

Trump calls climate change a " hoax" and not man-made, and has vowed to reverse the Clean Power Plan and defect on the commitments made at the Paris COP21 climate conference. Trump's energy future is focused on an increase in U.S. fossil fuel production, specifically resurrecting the coal industry - "We're going to save that coal industry, believe me."

Against this backdrop, Donald Trump is also making his broader agenda clear. In an effort to increase economic growth and jobs, he wants to roll back the powers of the Environmental Protection Agency which he has called "a disgrace, every week they come out with new regulations." At times, he has suggested that he would like to dismantle the agency altogether.

Putting his words into action, Trump announced this week that he was naming one of the best-known climate skeptics - Myron Ebell, director of the Center for Energy and Environment at the conservative Competitive Enterprise Institute - to lead his U.S. EPA transition team.

Gang of three

This is a similar script to that employed by President Ronald Reagan more than 35 years ago, and the result was actually the opposite of what he sought.

In his first term as president, Reagan set his sights on defederalization, or giving states more power, and in particular, rolling back environmental regulation. He appointed Ann Burford Gorsuch as EPA administrator, James Watt to head the Department of the Interior and Rita Lavelle was put in charge of Superfund, the program for cleaning up the country's most polluted sites. They were later to be known as the " gang of three."

Executive Office of the President of the United States

In the words of Gorsuch, "There is no riper pasture for regulatory reform than EPA." After her appointment, Gorsuch slowed agency activity and Lavelle brought Superfund activity to a stop. This was at first a welcome sign to those who sought an era of regulatory relief.

However, closed meetings soon created an air of favoritism and secret deals. And Gorsuch's slashing of the EPA's budget and staff created a critical backlash within the public and government.

In 1983, the gang of three was hastily removed from office, and in 1984 voters elected a Democratic Congress that stopped anti-environment initiatives. Lavelle was fired in February 1983, Gorsuch resigned in March and Watt resigned in October. In December, Lavelle was sentenced to serve six months in jail and pay a US$10,000 fine for perjury for lying to Congress in a case involving disposal of toxic wastes. To restore credibility to the beleaguered agency, Reagan reinstated William Ruckelshaus as EPA administrator.

Congress went on to renew and strengthen the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) in 1984, Superfund in 1986, the Safe Drinking Water Act in 1986 and the Clean Water Act in 1987. Environmental groups increased membership and budgets, and between 1982 and 1988 increased their legal activity by over 100 percent from that of the period before. In the words of former Sierra Club Conservation Director Carl Pope, President Reagan "reinvented the environmental movement by his contempt for it."

Changes underfoot in GOP?

Is Trump starting down the same path trod by Reagan? There is reason to suggest his road could create an even more severe backlash.

His climate position flies in the face of the position of nearly 200 scientific agencies around the world, including the scientific agencies of every one of the G8 countries. It also diverges from the position of a growing number of Republican voters as well as a growing share of the corporate sector.

Public opinion polls by Bloomberg, the Pew Research Center, the Brookings Institution and even some Republican pollsters show that a small, though growing, majority of Republican voters are becoming believers.

The truth is that many Republicans politicians, congressional aides, lobbyists and staff believe in the science of climate change and the need to take action when safely behind closed doors. They are just waiting for the right political cover to come out in public with their views. Will the Republican voter base really take out their wrath if they do so? Or will they be turned off by such an oppositional position?

If recent history and even more recent public opinion data are any indication, the answer to this second question may be yes. Concern for the environment is a long-term interest of the American public, and concern is more latent than top of mind. While recent surveys show that it ranks very low on election issue topics - number 12 in one poll, behind the economy, terrorism, foreign policy and health care - it is also one driven by saliency and immediacy, and it will awaken when threatened. At this point we can only watch and wait to see if that proves to be the case.

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Climate change and the presidential race: Lessons from the Reagan years

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Climate change did not come up in the first presidential debate - well, not in any real sense. Hillary Clinton jabbed at Donald Trump for claiming that "The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive."

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The montreal protocol

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You'd be forgiven for doing a double-take when noticing it is two conservative leaders who are responsible for the world's most successful environmental treaty, the Montreal Protocol, signed 30 years ago.

Climate change skepticism, let alone downright denial, has become such a hallmark of contemporary conservatism in North America that the efforts of Brian Mulroney and Ronald Reagan in 1987 now seem like a historical anomaly.

​The White House, after all, is currently occupied by someone who once described climate change as a hoax hatched by the Chinese. As president, Donald Trump has busied himself repealing many of the environmental protections implemented by his predecessors.

Canada's most recent Conservative prime minister, Stephen Harper, earned the ire of environmentalists for pushing oil pipeline development at the expense of action on climate change.

The party's new leader, Andrew Scheer, has so far indicated he will continue the Tories' long-running opposition to carbon pricing.

There was a different sense of urgency among conservatives 30 years ago, when Mulroney hosted an international climate conference in Montreal.

Scientists had just shocked the world with the discovery that made-man chemicals - chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) - were burning a hole through the Earth's ozone layer.

They predicted that continued use of CFCs would completely collapse the ozone layer by 2050. Without ozone protecting us from the sun's UV rays, skin cancer rates would skyrocket.

Faced with that dire outlook in 1987, 46 countries agreed, in Montreal, to dramatically limit the use and production of CFCs.

Mulroney signed the protocol. So did Reagan, often considered the ur-Republican. Even Margaret Thatcher, the Iron Lady of British Toryism, got on board.

Since then, close to 150 more countries have signed the protocol. It's credited with saving the ozone layer and delaying rising temperatures.

Former United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan called it "perhaps the single most successful international agreement to date."

On Monday, Mulroney will join Environment Minister Catherine McKenna in Montreal to mark the agreement's anniversary.

Environmental conservatives?

Historians have speculated about why this conservative troika felt compelled to act on climate change, especially given that it has since become a taboo topic for many on the right.

Some point out that Thatcher had studied chemistry before jumping into politics, and could grasp the science behind the warnings of scientists.

Others note that by the time he signed the protocol, Reagan had already undergone two operations to remove cancerous cells on his nose, likely caused by exposure to the sun.

​But these contingencies aside, conservatism was also made of different stuff back then - more concerned with pragmatism than ideological purity.

In agreeing to crack down on CFCs, Reagan reputedly bucked the recommendations of his advisors and the powerful industrial chemical lobby. And just as there is now, there was skepticism about the science.

But Reagan sold the Montreal Protocol as an "insurance policy," something worth the effort in case the science turned out to be right, according to George P. Shultz, the U.S. secretary of state at the time.

Shultz often cites Reagan's approach to the Montreal Protocol when attempting to convince Republicans that taking action on climate change doesn't mean sacrificing their conservative values.

"Before you get mugged by reality, take out an insurance policy. It's the Reagan way," he wrote in 2015.

Earlier this year, he joined several other old-guard Republicans issuing a document called " The Conservative Case for Carbon Dividends," a carbon tax plan that would see dividends returned to average Americans.

"For the sake of our children and grandchildren, I believe it is imperative that we set forth a climate solution that embodies long-standing conservative principles," he said at an event announcing the plan.

The Canadian drift to the right

Like it did in the U.S., conservatism north of the border also took a right-ward turn in the last 20 years, growing more suspicious of intellectualism and government intervention.

As part of that movement, the environment dropped low on the Conservative party's list of priorities.

That has made the party unrecognizable to at least one member of the Mulroney government: his environment minister when the Montreal Protocol was signed, Tom McMillan.

"If conservatives are not in the vanguard of the environmental movement, then what are they trying to conserve," he said during a phone interview Sunday.

"I would argue that nothing is more important for conservatives, and for anybody, than saving this fragile planet from destruction in the face of our own activities."

McMillan recently authored a book, Not My Party: The Rise and Fall of Canadian Tories, from Robert Stanfield to Stephen Harper, which criticizes the 2003 merger of the Canadian Alliance and Progressive Conservatives.

He attributes the shift in Canadian conservatism to a variety of factors, chief among them immigration from former Communist countries, the rise of the oil-rich West as a site of political and economic power and atomising modern technologies.

​Together these factors have combined to create a voter-base less receptive to a collectivist vision of government, to government wading into complex global issues, McMillan said.

But the Montreal Protocol, he added, offers a different lesson for Conservatives.

"It was as complex and technical and scientific an issue as the world has ever faced," McMillan said of the ozone hole.

"If that could be solved by political will, then there is not a single problem - economic or environmental - on the planet that cannot be solved with the same courage and political acumen."

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That time conservatives saved the planet from climate change | CBC News

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You'd be forgiven for doing a double-take when noticing it is two conservative leaders who are responsible for the world's most successful environmental treaty, the Montreal Protocol, signed 30 years ago. Climate change skepticism, let alone downright denial, has become such a hallmark of contemporary conservatism in North America that the efforts of Brian Mulroney and Ronald Reagan in 1987 now seem like a historical anomaly.

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President Trump's exquisitely awful decision to pull the U.S. out of the Paris climate accords has been underscored by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's announcement that 2017 was the second-warmest year ever recorded. To understand the true costs of the United States' abnegation of its international responsibilities, there's a useful analog in the story of another global environmental threat that arose in the last century. Then, too, the world was moving toward a united response when a U.S. presidential election intervened. Ultimately, the world dodged a bullet. This time, we may not be so lucky.

In 1974, the world was facing the depletion of the ozone layer. The distinguished science journal Nature had published an article providing evidence that chlorine compounds called CFCs were migrating to the upper atmosphere and destroying the ozone molecules that formed a protective shield against harmful ultraviolet radiation (three scientists - Sherwood Rowland, Mario Molina and Paul Crutzen - were later awarded the Nobel Prize in chemistry for the discovery). Without the shield, UV radiation would reach the Earth's surface, causing an extraordinary range of harmful effects, including cancers in animals and people and the wholesale destruction of phytoplankton, the basis of the oceanic food chain. By the late 1970s, the Carter administration had banned the use of CFCs in aerosol sprays, and was moving to phase out their use in refrigeration. Then came the election of Ronald Reagan.

CFC-using industries were already challenging the science and fighting regulation. They lobbied Congress, arguing that eliminating CFCs would cost tens of thousands of jobs. If this sounds a lot like the fossil fuel industry's posture toward global warming, it should: The playbook developed to slow efforts to combat climate change was developed during the CFC battle. Indeed, a number of the same scientists who disputed ozone depletion later showed up before Congress casting doubt on climate change. In the '70s, they discovered they didn't need to refute the science to delay action, they only needed to convince the public it was not yet settled.

Before Reagan, CFC producers were preparing for a worldwide ban on the compounds. DuPont, the dominant manufacturer, had begun to develop an alternative refrigerant. After the 1980 election, however, industry lobbyists found a friendly audience for their arguments. Anne Burford, Reagan's Environmental Protection Agency chief (and mother of Supreme Court Justice Neil M. Gorsuch), dismissed the threat of CFCs as an "unsubstantiated scare story." DuPont halted work on the alternatives, and production of CFCs reached new highs.

Then the world got lucky. In 1982, Joe Farman, a British geophysicist doing research in Antarctica, noticed something odd about the data he was collecting on stratospheric ozone. The readings, which had been stable for 25 years, began to show a drop. At first, he thought it was instrument error, but a recheck validated the measurements. Farman doggedly pursued the data, and in 1985 the world learned about the "ozone hole."

The rapid expansion of the ozone hole put the lie to the industry-sponsored disinformation campaign. In 1986, DuPont dropped its opposition to a CFC phase-out, but this seemingly high-minded action should be considered in context. DuPont had the lead in getting alternatives to market, and those alternatives promised bigger profit margins than CFCs. In September 1987, the Montreal Protocol was signed; 197 nations agreed to its terms, making it the first universally ratified treaty in the history of the United Nations.

Despite the dire warnings of industry, the transition away from CFCs didn't interrupt economic growth any more than had the earlier 20th century disappearance of the buggy whip. The important consequences of the delay in the phase-out were borne by Planet Earth.

The rapid expansion of the ozone hole put the lie to the industry-sponsored disinformation campaign.

Between 1978, when the Carter administration was moving toward phase-out, and 1988, just before the Montreal Protocol went into force, some 19 billion pounds of CFCs were produced. Like carbon dioxide molecules, CFCs have a life in the atmosphere that is measured in decades, and so for years after the treaty was ratified the ozone hole continued to grow. It was only in 2017, nearly 30 years after the protocol's signing, that scientists detected that the ozone hole was beginning to shrink. Sometime after 2050, they estimate, the ozone layer will return to normal.

We don't know how much smaller the ozone hole would have been had the world banned CFCs in 1978. But we do know that without Joe Farman, we might not have discovered this smoking gun until much later, perhaps too late for humanity and the biosphere.

Is there something similar that will put the lie to the disinformation campaign still being waged against the consensus on global warming? Perhaps the biblical hurricanes of last summer will shake the confidence of the deniers. Or more likely, the ubiquitous and unambiguous signal of costly, catastrophic sea-level rise.

Unfortunately, we need a Joe Farman (or two or three) to document the situation. The Trump administration wants to cut the budgets of the programs that monitor the atmosphere, and it's opposed to the Federal Emergency Management Agency updating flood maps to take into account the danger of rising seas.

Still, there is one more analogy between the ozone story and global warming that offers a glimmer of hope. As the Trump administration and Congress feverishly try to build a bridge to the 19th century, industry and many state and local governments are looking forward. General Motors and Ford are greatly expanding their production of electric cars. China, India, Britain and France, as well as California and other states, are considering bans on fossil-fuel vehicles. As did DuPont in the 1980s, these carmakers and other industries now recognize that remaining competitive requires them to adapt to the scientific consensus on climate change. We can only hope that it's not too late.

Eugene Linden is the author of "Winds of Change: Climate, Weather, and the Destruction of Civilizations."

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Reagan made a massive environmental mistake. Trump is repeating it, only worse

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President Trump's exquisitely awful decision to pull the U.S. out of the Paris climate accords has been underscored by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's announcement that 2017 was the second-warmest year ever recorded. To understand the true costs of the United States' abnegation of its international responsibilities, there's a useful analog in the story of another global environmental threat that arose in the last century.

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Trump et Reagan ressemblances

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A view to emulate Drupal core's handling of taxonomy/term.

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Reagan pas sûr que les hommes contribuent au GW donc fait des rech

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Environmental Protection Agency chief Scott Pruitt said he doesn't think human activity is a primary contributor to global warming: "We need to continue the debate and continue the review and the analysis."

In the 1980s, President Ronald Reagan was confronted with scientific evidence that manmade chemicals were depleting Earth's ozone layer. Although he didn't have 100 percent proof, he acted anyway, and signed the Montreal Protocol. The protocol called on all nations to transition to chemicals that did not harm our atmosphere. As it turned out, Reagan acted just in time, and the ozone hole is shrinking.

We now have NASA and many major scientific bodies saying human CO2 is warming our planet. We don't have 100 percent proof, but there's enough evidence for prudent, conservative people to act - call it an insurance policy.

Former Reagan Secretary of State George Schultz has written, "We all know there are those who have doubts about the problems presented by climate change. But if these doubters are wrong, the evidence is clear that the consequences, while varied, will be mostly bad, some catastrophic."

Let's be Reaganesque, and take out an insurance policy - just in case Mr. Pruitt is wrong.

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Take a tip from Reagan; prepare for global warming | The Fresno Bee

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Environmental Protection Agency chief Scott Pruitt said he doesn't think human activity is a primary contributor to global warming: "We need to continue the debate and continue the review and the analysis." In the 1980s, President Ronald Reagan was confronted with scientific evidence that manmade chemicals were depleting Earth's ozone layer.

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Reagan action

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"What would Reagan do?" (WWRD?) is a commonplace query on the right, and recently it has been applied to the vexing issue of climate change. It has been pointed out that Reagan embraced the 1987 Montreal Protocol that phased out chloro-flourocarbons (CFCs) in order to reduce damage to the stratospheric ozone layer. The Montreal Protocol was one of the diplomatic precedents for the Kyoto Protocol a decade later, which proposed to begin phasing out greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The implication is that Reagan would have gone along with the Kyoto Protocol, unlike George W. Bush, who rejected it, or the current crop of GOP leaders who are skeptical of the climate campaign.

More recently Reagan's great secretary of state, George Shultz, argued in a Washington Post op-ed (" A Reagan Approach to Climate Change ") that Reagan would have supported a carbon tax as an "insurance policy" against the risk of catastrophic climate change decades down the road. Now I love George Shultz. He was one of the heroes of the endgame of the Cold War, performing magnificently as Reagan's point man in the tough confrontation with the Soviet Union that ended the evil empire by the early 1990s. And doesn't he tower above our current and previous secretary of state in every way?

But I think he's misread Reagan here. Let's leave aside the argument about whether Reagan would go along with the alarmist predictions for catastrophic climate change-though it should be pointed out about the Montreal Protocol that Reagan was convinced of the much simpler and more direct scientific evidence, and that substitutes passed a cost-benefit test, which GHG reduction schemes today emphatically do not. To the extent that climate change can be considered a global existential threat on par with the nuclear arms race that Reagan confronted upon becoming president in 1980, Reagan would think of measures a lot bolder than a carbon tax. And he would surely arouse the ferocious anger of the climate change establishment in doing so.

In fact arms control was another of the diplomatic precedents for the Kyoto Protocol framework for climate change-the attempt to reduce a massive threat by successive incremental technical measures. Reagan famously said "nuts" to all that, and proposed instead to make missile-launched nuclear weapons obsolete through technological advance-specifically his "strategic defense initiative" (SDI). The scientific community was outraged. The diplomatic community was scandalized. Our NATO allies were alarmed and distrustful. But the Soviets were terrified, and Reagan's SDI became the game changer that ended the arms race.

This kind of game-changing reorientation of the problem is exactly what is necessary today if you think climate change is a catastrophic threat. One of the crucial differences between the Montreal Protocol's phasing out of CFCs and greenhouse gases is that there were ready substitutes for CFCs that were affordable and-crucially- scalable. Neither of these things are true with regard to replacements for fossil fuel energy. Carbon taxes, cap and trade, and other popular ideas aren't even worth thinking of as half-measures. In this regard, the parallel with the arms "control" treaties of the 1970s is quite close, in that those treaties didn't reduce nuclear arsenals at all, but merely regulated their further buildup. No wonder Reagan wasn't happy with this state of affairs. Likewise, there is no credible scenario today under emissions trading or a carbon tax that doesn't see fossil fuels increasing from their current level and dominating the world's energy supply at mid-century.

We should candidly admit that we don't know how to replace fossil fuels affordably and at global scale right now. But that was much like the situation Reagan faced when he proposed SDI in 1983 as the remedy for the arms race. It was overlooked or distorted at the time, but Reagan didn't think we could develop and deploy SDI quickly. In that famous speech, he called for a research program, likely taking 20 years or more to begin producing results (which is about how long it did take to develop and deploy some missile defense systems-more valuable than ever with rogue states like North Korea and Iran developing intercontinental missiles and nuclear warheads). Reagan conceived SDI primarily as a challenge for the scientific community. Let's recall the climax of that speech:

"I know this is a formidable, technical task, one that may not be accomplished before the end of this century. Yet, current technology has attained a level of sophistication where it's reasonable for us to begin this effort. It will take years, probably decades of effort on many fronts. There will be failures and setbacks, just as there will be successes and breakthroughs. . . But with these considerations firmly in mind, I call upon the scientific community in our country, those who gave us nuclear weapons, to turn their great talents now to the cause of mankind and world peace, to give us the means of rendering these nuclear weapons impotent and obsolete."

So advice to today's GOP: if you seek a truly Reaganite approach to climate change, start by writing an SDI-style speech about the problem with the object of making fossil fuels obsolete not by making them artificially more expensive through a tax, but by coming up with new energy sources that are just as cheap and scalable to the whole planet. Environmentalists will howl at the moon with indignation, just as liberals hated Reagan's SDI. One thing everyone forgets: SDI was very popular with the American people. I suspect a Reaganite research and development emphasis on energy would be much more popular than a carbon tax or Obama's Rube Goldberg "clean power plan" that does nothing serious about energy transformation.

Footnote: I once heard Shultz tell the story that when oil prices fell sharply in the mid-1980s, and hence gasoline prices went down to something like 79 cents a gallon, he proposed to Reagan that it was a perfect time to embrace a 50-cent-a-gallon gas tax that would promote conservation and reduce the federal budget deficit. Reagan, he recalled, smiled in a way that made clear to Shultz that Reagan wasn't about to consider the idea for a second. And neither would Reagan come anywhere near a carbon tax.

Oh, and let's not forget that Shultz was not enthusiastic about SDI either.

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What Would Ronald Reagan Do About Climate Change?

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"What would Reagan do?" (WWRD?) is a commonplace query on the right, and recently it has been applied to the vexing issue of climate change. It has been pointed out that Reagan embraced the 1987 Montreal Protocol that phased out chloro-flourocarbons (CFCs) in order to reduce damage to the stratospheric ozone layer.

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L Avis de carter sur trump

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What would Jimmy Carter do if he became president of the United States again?

Pretty much the opposite of what the current Oval Office occupant is doing.

"If I were foolish enough to feel I could be president again, I think the first thing I would do would be to change all of the policies that President Trump has initiated," Carter, 93, said Wednesday night at Emory University. "I pray for him fairly regularly. If he answered my prayers, he'd have to change a lot of things."

Carter's comments, which came midway through his 37th annual Town Hall for first-year Emory students, sparked a standing ovation among about half the youthful crowd packed onto the bleachers in the Woodruff P.E. Center. Nor was it his only popular response during a nearly hourlong Q&A with some 1700 students who were young enough to be his grandchildren.

What do you consider the greatest threat facing our generation, asked one member of the class of 2022?

"I would say global warming," Carter responded, summoning the image of Hurricane Florence bearing down on the Southeast and dominating news coverage. "I don't have any doubt that the hurricane now on its way to the Carolinas and North Georgia is exaggerated in its power and devastating capabilities because the oceans are getting much warmer."

Are you a feminist, another freshman wanted to know?

"All of my life, I have been dominated by women. And it's been a voluntary thing on my part," Carter smiled, explaining that his mother had been a registered nurse and that his wife, Rosalynn, has been his equal, valued partner throughout their 72 -year marriage. "When I got to be governor and president, I was pretty well trained on how to treat women with equality. (And) when I left office, I had appointed more women federal judges than all of my predecessors in history combined."

So yes, Carter told the lustily cheering audience, "I am a feminist. And very proud of it."

The annual town hall has become a cherished fall ritual at Emory, where Carter has been University Distinguished Professor since leaving the White House in January 1981. It's a title he greatly cherishes, the former president and Nobel Peace Prize winner made clear to the students. Albeit with one nagging complaint:

"Even though I have been here for 37 years and written 32 books, I'm still not a tenured professor," Carter quipped.

The town hall wasn't open to the public and the questions -- which were submitted ahead of time, including on Twitter (the event even had its own hashtag, #AskCTH) -- were chosen at random to be politely hurled Carter's way.

It all had a rather freewheeling, "Ask Me Anything" feel -- even without the presence this year of Rosalynn Carter, who had other commitments, or of Dooley, the top-hat-wearing skeletal creature who serves as Emory's de facto mascot.

"This is the first time in 37 years my wife hasn't been here and the first time in 37 years that Dooley hasn't been here," Carter said in his opening remarks, pausing for a beat and breaking into a big grin. "And I miss my wife!"

Still, he didn't duck any of the questions. And that included a particularly dicey one that might have tripped up a less skilled peanut farmer-turned-politician.

What's your peanut butter preference, Mr. President?

"For sandwiches I prefer creamy peanut butter," Carter said as about half the crowd whooped and applauded. Then, playing to the other half of the room: "And for munching during the day, (like) on a cracker, I prefer crunchy."

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Jimmy Carter at Emory: I'd change all of Trump's policies if I were president again

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What would Jimmy Carter do if he became president of the United States again? Pretty much the opposite of what the current Oval Office occupant is doing. "If I were foolish enough to feel I could be president again, I think the first thing I would do would be to change all of the policies that President Trump has initiated," Carter, 93, said Wednesday night at Emory University.

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Losing Earth: The Decade We Almost Stopped Climate Change (Published 2018)

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We knew everything we needed to know, and nothing stood in our way. Nothing, that is, except ourselves. A tragedy in two acts.

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Carter 1989

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ASPEN, Colo. -- President Jimmy Carter called a tax on carbon emissions "the only reasonable approach" to combating climate change during an appearance here Tuesday, but lamented that even piecemeal actions are unlikely to get through a divided Congress.

Carter, 89, who received a lifetime achievement award on the final day of the American Renewable Energy Day summit, spoke during a luncheon attended by a number of conservationists as well as Ted Turner, T. Boone Pickens and Tom Steyer, the California billionaire pledging to devote his personal finances to political candidates willing to take action on climate change.

The 39th president, who created the Dept. of Energy and advocated for conservation before scientists began to understand the impact of human activity on climate, told AREI's Sally Ranney that he didn't have to deal with the same level of partisan gridlock in Congress as President Obama currently does.

"I think now the opportunity is even greater for us to take action. But we had very good support then from Republicans, almost as much from Republicans as Democrats," he said.

"The country was not divided into red and blue states then. Money didn't completely control the campaigns for Congress and president.

"I believe almost anything President Obama advocates, Congress is going to oppose."

The Obama administration is currently considering new rules to force states to reduce carbon emissions by 30 percent by the year 2030, but Carter cautioned that executive actions taken without the support of Congress won't be as impactful as passing legislation.

Carter said he believes Obama is now "doing the best he can" but that he wishes he'd acted sooner.

"I was a bit disappointed he took a wait and see approach during his first five or six years in office, but he's moving now," Carter said.

Carter also lamented that the United States lags behind most other developed countries in the percentage of its energy that's drawn from renewable sources.

"We've seen some countries devote themselves to renewable energy," Carter said, noting that Canada now gets 60 percent of its energy from renewable sources.

"The United States is right at the bottom, with only 10 percent of our energy coming from renewable sources. So we still have a tremendous opportunity to do what we haven't done.

"The biggest problem we have right now is some nutcases in our country who don't believe in global warming. I think that they are going to change their position because the evidence of the ravages of global warming is coming or is already there."

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President Carter calls for carbon tax at Aspen renewable energy conference

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ASPEN, Colo. -- President Jimmy Carter called a tax on carbon emissions "the only reasonable approach" to combating climate change during an appearance here Tuesday, but lamented that even piecemeal actions are unlikely to get through a divided Congress.

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Carter

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Almost exactly 40 years have passed since Jimmy Carter put on his beige cardigan and went on national television to speak about energy. He had just taken office, and the United States was in the depths of a years-long energy crisis triggered by the Arab oil embargo of 1973. Echoes of Carter's fireside chat resound these four decades hence as a new administration assumes power - an administration that is overtly hostile to the Department of Energy, the inception of which Carter announced that winter evening in 1977.

The challenge Carter faced of overhauling the nation's energy policy parallels the task of transforming today's energy economy. The central problem in the 1970's was a geopolitically fraught overdependence on foreign oil. In 2017, as the repercussions of climate change unfold, the country must undertake an epic transition from fossil fuels to carbon-free energy. The prevailing circumstances in Carter's day were very different from those now, but the pertinent policy prescriptions and economic considerations then and now are remarkably similar, as are the political forces aligned to oppose any threat to the status quo.

As in Carter's day, contemporary resistance to conservation stems from a fear that any cutbacks will stunt economic growth.

Carter was an early proponent of renewable energy. In a symbolic gesture, he famously ordered the installation of a solar hot water system on the roof of the White House. He believed sincerely in solar technology because it harnessed a cheap, embargo-proof, non-depletable source of energy, and he called on the nation to develop it aggressively. His bullish stance on solar power in 1979 anticipated its growing importance in the present-day energy mix.

Carter was equally prescient about employing taxation as a means to discourage the use of fossil fuels. He proposed a 50-cents-per-gallon "stand-by" tax on gasoline, to be phased in as fuel consumption rose above predetermined thresholds - a plan that Congress promptly rejected. But today, policymakers around the world are experimenting with carbon taxes to drive down the use of fossil fuels and capture their hidden social and environmental costs.

The gasoline tax proposal was part of a broad effort to promote conservation, a cornerstone of Carter's energy policy. Besides the much-mocked admonishments to lower thermostats, his administration called for ambitious increases in fuel economy standards. Near the end of Carter's term, the major auto manufacturers had acknowledged they could achieve at least 30 MPG by 1985, so a proposed requirement for 48 MPG by 1995 seemed realistic. But after Carter left office, the proposal was watered down, and fuel economy standards even now remain well within the comfort zone of the automakers.

Persuading Americans to conserve energy proved as difficult then as it does today. In a famous speech from April 1977, Carter, borrowing from William James, called solving the energy crisis "the moral equivalent of war." He exhorted Americans to use less energy, and he warned of the consequences if they failed to change their lifestyle. Mirroring this rhetoric in a widely-read essay in the New Republic last summer, renowned climate activist Bill McKibben called for a wartime footing to battle climate change, noting the nation's shared sacrifice and social cohesion during WWII.

As in Carter's day, contemporary resistance to conservation stems from a fear that any cutbacks will stunt economic growth. Carter spoke to exactly that point in the "moral equivalent" address, arguing that an " effective conservation program will create hundreds of thousands of new jobs." That same message resonates in Barack Obama's recent op-ed in Science Magazine. Obama emphasizes the decoupling of carbon emissions and economic growth, i.e., the idea that economies can grow even as the adoption of renewable energy reduces the output of harmful emissions.

The secretary of energy has advocated the elimination of the Department of Energy. The administrator of the EPA is a lackey of the fossil fuel industry. The secretary of state is an oil mogul.

President Carter - having witnessed Ronald Reagan's dismantling of his renewable energy programs in favor of promoting oil, gas and coal - must be troubled by the prospect of Obama's climate initiatives meeting the same fate under Trump. The secretary of energy has advocated the elimination of the Department of Energy. The administrator of the EPA is a lackey of the fossil fuel industry. The secretary of state is an oil mogul.

And in that fireside chat 40 years ago, Carter said: " I realize that many of you have not believed that we really have an energy problem," which brings to mind the pack of climate change deniers now getting settled in Washington. Carter's agenda to move our energy economy toward efficiency and renewable sources remains unfinished, yet more urgent than ever.
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That '70s Show: America's Energy Crisis Then, And Now

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Almost exactly 40 years have passed since Jimmy Carter put on his beige cardigan and went on national television to speak about energy. He had just taken office, and the United States was in the depths of a years-long energy crisis triggered by the Arab oil embargo of 1973.

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Carter

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[ In this hearing former President Carter was brought in by the Senate to help them cope with the energy crisis. Carter said that no one but the President can educate the public about the energy crisis and "explain to ... Continue reading

[Former President Carter and General Wald both say the American public need to be better informed about the energy crisis to motivate them to stop buying gas-guzzling vehicles, since that's ... Continue reading

This speech is one of the reasons he wasn't elected. Reagan's "Morning in America" happy talk was far more appealing. Jimmy Carter delivered this televised speech on April 18, 1977. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/carter/filmmore/ps_energy.html http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tPePpMxJaA (1977) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1IlRVy7oZ58 (1979, bad audio) Tonight I want ... Continue reading

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President Jimmy Carter | Peak Energy & Resources, Climate Change, and the Preservation of Knowledge

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In this hearing former President Carter was brought in by the Senate to help them cope with the energy crisis. Carter said that no one but the President can educate the public about the energy crisis and "explain to ...

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Carter

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Peak Energy & Resources, Climate Change, and the Preservation of Knowledge

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[ In this hearing former President Carter was brought in by the Senate to help them cope with the energy crisis. Carter said that no one but the President can educate the public about the energy crisis and "explain to them their own personal and national interest in controlling the excessive influx of oil and our dependence on uncertain sources. And it requires some sacrifice on the part of Americans- lower your thermostat. We actually had a pretty good compliance with the 55-miles-per-hour speed limit for a while, and people were very proud of the fact that they were saving energy by insulating their homes and doing things of that kind."

Senator John Kerry, Massachusetts. "Why have we not been able to get together as a nation and resolve our serious energy problem?'' These were the words of President Jimmy Carter in 1979. And regrettably, despite the strong efforts of President Carter and others, here we are, in 2009, still struggling to meet the same challenge today. Ever since President Nixon set a goal of energy independence by 1980, price spikes and moments of crisis have inspired grand plans and Manhattan projects for energy independence, but the political will to take decisive action has dissipated as each crisis has passed.

Former President Carter: In an address to the Nation, I said: "Our decision about energy will test the character of the American people and the ability of the President and Congress to govern this Nation. This difficult effort will be the 'moral equivalent of war,' except that we will be uniting our efforts to build and not to destroy.... When I became President, the average gas mileage on a car was 12 miles per gallon, and we mandated, by the time I went out of office, 27.5 miles per gallon within 8 years. But, President Reagan and others didn't think that was important, and so, it was frittered away. We have gone back to the gas guzzlers which I think has been one of the main reasons that Ford and Chrysler and General Motors are in so much trouble now. Instead of being constrained to make efficient automobiles, they made the ones upon which they made more profit. Of course, you have to remember, too, that the oil companies and the automobile companies have always been in partnership, because the oil companies want to sell as much oil as possible, even the imported oil-the profit goes to Chevron and others. I'm not knocking profit, but that's a fact. And the automobile companies knew they made more profit on gas guzzlers. So, there was kind of a subterranean agreement there."
Alice Friedemann Senator John Kerry, Massachusetts. "Why have we not been able to get together as a nation and resolve our serious energy problem?'' These were the words of President Jimmy Carter in 1979. And regrettably, despite the strong efforts of President Carter and others, here we are, in 2009, still struggling to meet the same challenge today. www.energyskeptic.com author of "When Trucks Stop Running: Energy and the Future of Transportation, 2015, Springer]
The downside of our continued dependence on oil is compelling, it is well known; and the downside is only growing.

Economically, it results in a massive continuous transfer of American wealth to oil-exporting nations, and it leaves us vulnerable to price and supply shocks.

But, the true cost of our addiction extends far beyond what we pay at the pump; its revenues and power sustain despots and dictators, and it obliges our military to defend our energy supply in volatile regions of the world at very great expense.

These were some of the problems that then-President Carter saw, understood, and defined, back in the latter part of the 1970s. They remain problems today. And to this long list of problems, we now add two very urgent, and relatively new, threats: Global terror, funded indirectly by our expenditures on oil, and global climate change driven by the burning of fossil fuels.

To make matters worse, we are adding billions of new drivers on the roads and consumers across the developing world, as India and China's population and other populations move to automobiles, as lots of other folks did, all of that will ensure that the supplies of existing energy sources will grow even tighter.

All the trends are pointing in that wrong direction. According to the International Energy Agency, global energy demand is expected to increase approximately 45% between 2006 and 2030, fueled largely by growth in the developing world. So, we're here today to discuss both the geostrategic challenges posed by our current energy supply and the need to find new and more secure sources of energy in the future.
Ever since President Nixon set a goal of energy independence by 1980, price spikes and moments of crisis have inspired grand plans and Manhattan projects for energy independence, but the political will to take decisive action has dissipated as each crisis has passed. That is how steps forward have been reversed and efforts have stood still even as the problem has gotten worse. In 1981, our car and light-truck fleet had a fuel efficiency rate of 20.5 miles per gallon. Today, that number is essentially the same. The only difference? Back then we imported about a third of our oil; today we import 70 percent.
From development to diplomacy to security, no part of our foreign policy is untouched by this issue. Region by region, our energy security challenge is varied and enormous.
It's a particular pleasure to have President Carter here, because President Carter had the courage, as President of the United States, to tell the truth to Americans about energy and about these choices, and he actually set America on the right path in the 1970s.
Too often, the presence of oil multiples threats, exacerbates conflicts, stifles democracy and development, and blocks accountability.

In Europe the potential for monopolistic Russian control over energy supplies is a source of profound concern for our allies, with serious implications for the daily lives of their citizens.

In Nigeria, massive oil revenues have fueled corruption and conflict.

In Venezuela, President Chavez has used oil subsidies to great effect to buy influence with neighbors.

Sudan uses its energy supply to buy impunity from the global community for abuses.

Iran uses petro dollars to fund Hamas and Hezbollah, and to insulate its nuclear activities from international pressure

We know that, at least in the past, oil money sent to Saudi Arabia has eventually found its way into the hands of jihadists.

And oil remains a major bone of contention and a driver of violence in Kirkuk and elsewhere among Iraq's religious and ethnic groups.

JIMMY CARTER, Former PRESIDENT of the United States, Plains, Georgia It is a pleasure to accept Senator Kerry's request to relate my personal experiences in meeting the multiple challenges of a comprehensive energy policy and the interrelated strategic issues. They have changed very little during the past three decades.
And alongside these security concerns, we must also recognize that access to energy is fundamental to economic development. Billions of people who lack access to fuel and electricity will not only be denied the benefits of economic development, their energy poverty leaves them vulnerable to greater political instability and more likely to take advantage of dirty or local fuel sources that then damage the local environment and threaten the global climate.

Taken together, these challenges dramatically underscore a simple truth: Scarce energy supplies represent a major force for instability in the 21st century. That is why, even though the price of a barrel of oil is, today, $90 below its record high from last summer, we cannot afford to repeat the failures of the past.

In recent years, Congress and the administration have made some progress. In 2007, fleet-wide fuel efficiency standards were raised for the first time since the Carter administration. In February we passed an economic recovery package which was America's largest single investment in clean energy that we have ever made. [But] the lion's share of the hard work still lies in front of us.
In an address to the Nation, I said: ''Our decision about energy will test the character of the American people and the ability of the President and Congress to govern this Nation. This difficult effort will be the 'moral equivalent of war,' except that we will be uniting our efforts to build and not to destroy.''
He created what then was the first major effort for research and development into the energy future, with the creation of the Energy Laboratory, out in Colorado, and tenured professors left their positions to go out there and go to work for America's future.

Regrettably, the ensuing years saw those efforts unfunded, stripped away, and we saw America's lead in alternative and renewable energy technologies, that we had developed in our universities and laboratories, transferred to Japan and Germany and other places, where they developed them. In the loss of that technology, we lost hundreds of thousands of jobs and part of America's energy future. President Carter saw that, knew and understood that future. He dealt with these choices every day in the Oval Office, and he exerted genuine leadership. He's been a student of these issues and a powerful advocate for change in the decades since, and we're very grateful that he's taken time today to share insights with us about this important challenge that the country faces.

Long before my inauguration, I was vividly aware of the interrelationship between energy and foreign policy. U.S. oil prices had quadrupled in 1973 while I was Governor, with our citizens subjected to severe oil shortages and long gas lines brought about by a boycott of Arab OPEC countries. Even more embarrassing to a proud and sovereign nation was the secondary boycott that I inherited in 1977 against American corporations doing business with Israel.

We overcame both challenges, but these were vivid demonstrations of the vulnerability that comes with excessive dependence on foreign oil. At the time, we were importing 50% of consumed oil, almost 9 million barrels per day, and were the only industrialized nation that did not have a comprehensive energy policy.

It was clear that we were subject to deliberately imposed economic distress and even political blackmail and, a few weeks after becoming President, I elevated this issue to my top domestic priority.

First, let me review our work with the U.S. Congress, which will demonstrate obvious parallels with the challenges that lie ahead. Our effort to conserve energy and to develop our own supplies of oil, natural gas, coal, and renewable sources were intertwined domestically with protecting the environment, equalizing supplies to different regions of the country, and balancing the growing struggle and animosity between consumers and producers.
The legislation put heavy penalties on gas-guzzling automobiles; forced electric utility companies to encourage reduced consumption; mandated insulated buildings and efficient electric motors and heavy appliances; promoted gasohol production and car pooling; decontrolled natural gas prices at a rate of 10% per year; promoted solar, wind, geothermal, and water power; permitted the feeding of locally generated electricity into utility grids; and regulated strip mining and leasing of offshore drilling sites. We were also able to improve efficiency by deregulating our air, rail, and trucking transportation systems. What remained was decontrolling oil prices and the imposition of a windfall profits tax.
Oil prices were controlled at artificially low levels, through an almost incomprehensible formula based on the place and time of discovery, etc., and the price of natural gas was tightly controlled-but only if it crossed a State line. Scarce supplies naturally went where prices were highest, depriving some regions of needed fuel. Energy policy was set by more than 50 Federal agencies, and I was determined to consolidate them into a new department. In April 1977, after just 90 days, we introduced a cohesive and comprehensive energy proposal, with 113 individual components. We were shocked to learn that it was to be considered by 17 committees and subcommittees in the House and would have to be divided into 5 separate bills in the Senate. Speaker Tip O'Neill was able to create a dominant ad hoc House committee under Chairman Lud Ashley, but the Senate remained divided under two strong willed, powerful, and competitive men, ''Scoop'' Jackson and Russell Long. In July, we pumped the first light crude oil into our strategic petroleum reserve in Louisiana, the initial stage in building up to my target of 115 days of imports. Less than a month later, I signed the new Energy Department into law, with James Schlesinger as Secretary, and the House approved my omnibus proposal.

In the Senate, the oil and automobile industries prevailed in Senator Long's committee, which produced unacceptable bills dealing with price controls and the use of coal. There was strong bipartisan support throughout, but many liberals, preferred no legislation to higher prices. Three other Senate bills encompassed my basic proposals on conservation, coal conversion, and electricity rates.

I insisted on the maintenance of a comprehensive or omnibus bill, crucial-then and now-to prevent fragmentation and control by oil company lobbyists, and the year ended in an impasse. As is now the case, enormous sums of money were involved, and the life of every American was being touched. The House-Senate conference committee was exactly divided and stalemated. I could only go directly to the people, and I made three primetime TV speeches in addition to addressing a joint session of Congress.

Also, we brought a stream of interest groups into the White House-several times a week-for direct briefings. The conferees finally reached agreement, but under pressure many of them refused to sign their own report, and both Long and Jackson threatened filibusters on natural gas and an oil windfall profits tax. In the meantime, I was negotiating to normalize diplomatic relations with China, bringing Israel and Egypt together in a peace agreement, sparring with the Soviets on a Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty, allocating vast areas of land in Alaska, and trying to induce 67 Members of a reluctant Senate to ratify the Panama Canal treaties.

Our closest allies were critical of our profligate waste of energy, and OPEC members were exacerbating our problems. Finally clearing the conference committee and a last-minute filibuster in the Senate, the omnibus bill returned to the House for a vote just before the 1978 elections, and following an enormous White House campaign it passed, 207-206.

This was a complex and extremely important issue, with hundreds of billions of dollars involved. The big question was how much of the profits would be used for public benefit. By this time, the Iranian revolution and the impending Iran-Iraq war caused oil prices to skyrocket from $15 to $40 a barrel ($107 in today's prices), as did the prospective deregulated price. We reached a compromise in the spring of 1980, with a variable tax rate of 30 percent to 70 percent, the proceeds to go into the general treasury and be allocated by the Congress in each year's budget. The tax would expire after 13 years or when $227 billion had been collected. Our strong actions regarding conservation and alternate energy sources resulted in a reduction of net oil imports by 50%, from 8.6 to 4.3 million barrels per day by 1982-just 28% of consumption. Increased efficiency meant that during the next 20 years our Gross National Product increased four times as much as energy consumption. This shows what can be done, but unfortunately there has been a long period of energy complacency and our daily imports are now almost 13 million barrels.

The United States now uses 2.5 times more oil than China and 7.5 times more than India or, on a per capita consumption basis, 12 times China's and 28 times India's. Although our rich Nation can afford these daily purchases, there is little doubt that, in general terms, we are constrained not to alienate our major oil suppliers, and some of these countries are publicly antagonistic, known to harbor terrorist organizations, or obstruct America's strategic interests.

When we are inclined to use restrictive incentives, as on Iran, we find other oil consumers reluctant to endanger their supplies. On the other hand, the blatant interruption of Russia's natural gas supplies to Ukraine has sent a warning signal to its European customers. Excessive oil purchases are the solid foundation of our net trade deficit, which creates a disturbing dependence on foreign nations that finance our debt.

We still face criticism from some of our allies who are far ahead of us in energy efficiency.

A major new problem was first detected while I was President, when science adviser Frank Press informed me of evidence by scientists at Woods Hole that the earth was slowly warming and that human activity was at least partially responsible.

It is difficult for us to defend ourselves against accusations that our waste of energy contributes to [climate change]. Everywhere, we see the intense competition by China for present and future oil supplies (and other commodities), and their financial aid going to other key governments. Recently I found the Chinese to be very proud of their more efficient, less polluting coal power plants. They are building about one a month, while we delay our first full-scale model. We also lag far behind many other nations in ... the efficiency of energy consumption

Let me emphasize that our inseparable energy and environmental decisions will determine how well we can maintain a vibrant society, protect our strategic interests, regain worldwide political and economic leadership, meet relatively new competitive challenges, and deal with less fortunate nations. Collectively, nothing could be more important.

An omnibus proposal could be addressed collectively by the Congress by committees brought together in a common approach to this complex problem, because no single element of it can be separated from the others. I think it would also minimize the adverse influence of special interest groups who don't want to see the present circumstances changed or a new policy put into effect to deal with either energy or with the environment. Another advantage of an omnibus bill is it gives the President and other spokespersons for our Government, including all of you, an opportunity to address this so the American people can understand it.

I think that it is almost necessary to see a single proposal come forward combining energy and environment, as was the case in 1977 to 1980, so that it can be addressed comprehensively. This is not an easy thing, because now, with inflation, I guess several trillion dollars are involved; back in those days, hundreds of billions of dollars. And the interest groups are extremely powerful. I had the biggest problem, at the time, with consumer groups who didn't want to see the price of oil and natural gas deregulated. It was only by passing the windfall profits tax that we could induce some of them to support the legislation, because they saw that the money would be used for helping poor families pay high prices on natural gas for heating their homes and for alternative energy sources.
President CARTER. In the first place, no one can do this except the President-to bring this issue to the American public, to explain to them their own personal and national interest in controlling the excessive influx of oil and our dependence on uncertain sources. And it requires some sacrifice on the part of Americans- lower your thermostat. We actually had a pretty good compliance with the 55-miles-per-hour speed limit for a while, and people were very proud of the fact that they were saving energy by insulating their homes and doing things of that kind.
Global warming is a new issue that didn't exist when I was in office, although it was first detected then. I would hope that we would take the leadership role in accurately describing the problem, not exaggerating it, and tying it in with the conservation of energy. And the clean burning of coal, I think, is a very important issue, as well.

I mentioned very briefly the constraints that are already on us. We are very careful not to aggravate our main oil suppliers. We don't admit it. But, we have to be cautious. And I'm not criticizing that decision. But, some of these people from whom we buy oil and enrich are harboring terrorists; we know it. Some of them are probably condemning America as a nation. They have become our most vocal public critics. We still buy their oil, and we don't want to alienate them so badly that we can't buy it.
When I became President, the average gas mileage on a car was 12 miles per gallon, and we mandated, by the time I went out of office, 27.5 miles per gallon within 8 years. But, President Reagan and others didn't think that was important, and so, it was frittered away. We have gone back to the gas guzzlers which I think has been one of the main reasons that Ford and Chrysler and General Motors are in so much trouble now. Instead of being constrained to make efficient automobiles, they made the ones upon which they made more profit. Of course, you have to remember, too, that the oil companies and the automobile companies have always been in partnership, because the oil companies want to sell as much oil as possible, even the imported oil-the profit goes to Chevron and others. I'm not knocking profit, but that's a fact. And the automobile companies knew they made more profit on gas guzzlers. So, there was kind of a subterranean agreement there.
We also see our allies refraining from putting, I'd say, appropriate influence-I won't say ''pressure''-on Iran to change their policy concerning nuclear weapons because they don't want to interrupt the flow from one of their most important suppliers of oil. So, I think, to the extent that the Western world and the oil-consuming world can reduce our demands, the less we will be constrained in our foreign policy to promote democracy and freedom and international progress.

One of the things that surprised me, back in the 1970s, was that we even lost a good bit of our supplies from Canada. Because when we had the OPEC oil embargo, Canada sent their supplies to other countries, as well. So, we can't expect to depend just on oil supplies from Mexico and Canada. I would guess that our entire status as a leading nation in the world will depend on the role that we play in energy and environment in the future, not only removing our vulnerability to possible pressures and blackmail.

Senator Lugar: President Carter, in your State of the Union Address, January 23, 1980, which you have mentioned, you articulated what became known to many as the Carter Doctrine. That has several interpretations, but one of them was that the United States would use its military to protect, or to protect our access to Middle Eastern oil. At the same time, in the same speech, you went on to say, ''We must take whatever actions are necessary to reduce our dependence on foreign oil.'' You have illustrated in your testimony today all the actions you took. It seems to me to be a part of our predicament, historically, at least often in testimony before this committee, the thought is that our relationship with Saudi Arabia has, implicitly or explicitly for 60 years, said, ''We want to be friends; furthermore, we want to make certain that you remain in charge of all of your oil fields, because we may need to take use of them. We would like to have those supplies, and in a fairly regular way.'' Now, on the other hand, we have been saying, as you stated, and other Presidents, that we have an abnormal dependence on foreign oil. I suppose one could rationalize this relationship by saying that Saudi Arabia is reasonably friendly in comparison, now, to, say, Venezuela or Iran or Russia or various others. And so, we might be able to pick and choose among them. Perhaps regardless of Presidential leadership, throughout all this period of time, the American public has decided that it wants to buy oil or it wants to buy products, whether it be cars, trucks, and so forth that use a lot of oil. As our domestic supplies have declined, that has meant, almost necessarily, that the amount imported from other places has gone up. And so, despite the Carter Doctrine, say, back in 1980s, we have a huge import bill. Increasingly, our balance-of-payment structure has been influenced very adversely by these payments. And so, many of us try to think through this predicament, and each administration has its own iteration. President Bush, most recently, in one of his State of the Union messages, said we are ''addicted to oil.'' At the same time, I remember a meeting at the White House in which he said, ''A lot of my oil friends are very angry with me for making such a statement, said, 'What's happened to you, George?' '' You know, there's this ambivalence in the American public about the whole situation. Now, what I want to ask, from your experience, how could we have handled the foreign policy aspect and/or the rhetoric or the developments, say, from 1980 onward, in different ways, as instructive of how we ought to be trying to handle it now? I'm conscious of the fact that many of us are talking about dependence upon foreign oil. We can even say, as we have in this committee, that you can see a string of expenditures, averaging about $500 million a year, even when we were at peace, on our military to really keep the flow going, or to offer assurance. Secretary Jim Baker once, when pushed on why we were worried about Iraq invading Kuwait, said of course it was the upset of aggression, but it's oil. And many people believe that was the real answer, that essentially we were prepared to go to war to risk American lives, and were doing so, all over oil so we could continue to run whatever SUVs or whatever else we had here with all the pleasures to which we've become accustomed. Why hasn't this dependence, the foreign policy dilemmas or the economic situation ever gripped the American public so there was a clear constituency that said, ''We've had enough, and our dependence upon foreign oil has really got to stop, and we are not inclined to use our military trying to protect people who are trying to hurt us''? Can you give us any instruction, from your experience?

I made three major televised prime-time addresses, and also spoke to a special session of Congress, just on energy; nothing else. That was just the first year. I had to keep it up. The public joined in and gave us support. The oil companies still were trying to get as much as possible from the rapidly increasing prices. They were not able to do so because of the legislation passed.

In 1979, at Christmastime when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, and I looked upon that as a direct threat to the security of my country. I pointed out to the Soviet Union, in a speech, that we would use every resource at our command, not excluding nuclear weapons, to protect America's security, and if they moved out of Afghanistan to try to take over the oil fields in the Middle East, this would be a direct threat to our existence, economically, and we would not abide by it. And, secretly, we were helping the freedom fighters-some of whom are no longer our friends-in Afghanistan overcome the Soviet invasion. And it never went further down into Iran and Iraq. Unfortunately that same area was then taken over by the war between Iran and Iraq, and all the oil out of those two countries stopped coming forward in those few months. That's when prices escalated greatly.

I would say that, in the future, we have to look forward to increasing pressures from all these factors. There's no doubt that, as China and India, just for instance, approach anywhere near the per capita consumption of oil that America is using now, the pressure on the international oil market is going to be tremendous, and we're going to, soon in the future, pass the $110-per-barrel figure again. And when that comes, we're going to be in intense competition with other countries that are emerging. I've just mentioned two of the so-called BRIC countries. I've mentioned Brazil and China. But, we know that India is also in there, and Russia is, too. I used the example of the increasing influence of Brazil in a benevolent way. That's going to continue. We're going to be competitive with Brazil, and we're also going to be competitive, increasingly, with China.

Everywhere we go in Africa, you see the Chinese presence, a very benevolent presence and perfectly legitimate. But, anywhere that has coal or oil or copper or iron or so forth, the Chinese are there, very quietly buying the companies themselves if they're under stress, as they are in Australia right now, or they're buying the ability to get those raw materials in a very inexpensive way in the future. We're going to be competing with them. They have an enormous buildup now of capital because of our adverse trade balance and buying our bonds, and they're able to give benevolent assistance now, wisely invested in some of the countries that I mentioned earlier. So, I think the whole strategic element of our dealing with the poorest countries in the world, of our dealing with friendly competitors, like Brazil, of our dealing with potential competitors in the future, like China, our dependence on unsavory suppliers of oil, all of those things depend on whether or not we have a comprehensive energy policy that saves energy and cuts down on the consumption and also whether we deal with environment.

Senator CARDIN. You made an interesting observation that the interest groups will make it difficult for us to get the type of legislation passed that we need to get passed. I find it disappointing is our failure to get the interest groups that benefit from significant legislation active-as active as the opponents. So, is there any experience that you can share with us as to how we could do a better job in mobilizing these interest groups? I know there's a patriotism, everybody wants to do the right thing, but, when it gets down to it, they're also interested in what they think is in their best immediate interest. I agree that the legislation needs to be a bill that deals with energy and the environment, that if we separate it, we're likely to get lost on both.
FREDERICK W. SMITH, Chairman, President & CEO, FEDEX CORP., Co-Chairman, Energy Security Leadership Council, Washington DC
President CARTER. Well, I deliberately mentioned three different interest groups-one was oil, one was automobiles, and one was consumers-just to show that there's a disparity among them in their opposition to some elements of the comprehensive energy policy that I put forward. The oil companies didn't want to have any of their profits go to the general treasury, renewable energy and that sort of thing. The consumers didn't want to see the price of natural gas and oil deregulated, because they wanted the cheapest possible supplies. The energy companies wanted to sell their natural gas, for instance, just in their own States where they were discovered, because the only price control on natural gas was if it crossed a State line. There was no restriction if they sold it in Texas or if they sold it in Oklahoma, where the gas was discovered. Those interest groups were varied, and they still are.
Oil is the lifeblood of a mobile, global economy. We are all dependent upon it, and that dependence brings with it inherent and serious risks. The danger is clear, and our sense of urgency must match it.
You will find some interest groups that will oppose any single aspect of the multiple issues that comprise an omnibus package, and they'll single-shot it enough to kill it, and just the lowest common denominator is likely to pass if it's treated in that way. The only way you can get it passed is to have it all together in one bill so that the consumers will say, ''Well, I don't like to see the increase in price, but the overall bill is better for me'' and for the oil companies to say, ''Well, we don't like to see the government take some of our profits, but the overall bill is good for me.'' That's the only way you can hope to get it. It was what I had to deal with for 4 solid years under very difficult circumstances in the Congress and so forth. And I think that's a very important issue to make.

And, to be repetitive, the only person that can do this is the President. The President has got to say, ''This is important to our Nation, for our own self-respect, for our own pride in being a patriot, for saving our own domestic economy-for creating new jobs and new technology, very exciting new jobs, and also for removing ourselves from the constraint of foreigners, who now control a major portion of the decisions made in foreign policy and who endanger our security.' ' So, the totality is the answer to your question. You've got to do it all together in order to meet these individual special interest groups' pressure that will try to preserve a tiny portion of it that's better from them and, one by one, they'll nibble the whole thing away.

I think that the fact that this Foreign Relations Committee is addressing this is extremely important, not just the Environmental Committee or the Energy Committee, but Foreign Relations, because it has so much to do with our interrelationship with almost every other country on Earth.

I would say this is about the only issue that I thought had to be treated comprehensively. It took me an entire 4 years. And I made so many speeches to the American people-fireside chats, and so forth-that the American people finally got sick of it, of my talking. [Laughter.] And the Congress was-the Senate and the House were very reluctant to take this up the second year, but I kept on the pressure, and I would say that it was costly, politically, just to harp on this issue repetitively. Anyway, I think, in general, comprehensive legislation may not be good, but, in this case, I think it's absolutely necessary.

FedEx delivers more than 6 million packages and shipments per day to over 220 countries and territories. In a 24-hour period, our fleet of aircraft flies the equivalent of 500,000 miles, and our couriers travel 2.5 million miles. We accomplish this with more than 275,000 dedicated employees, 670 aircraft, and some 70,000 motorized vehicles worldwide. FedEx's reliance on oil reflects the reliance of the wider transportation sector, and indeed the entire U.S. economy.

I understand that this may seem contradictory. We talk about ending our dependence on oil, and in the next sentence about drilling for more oil. But the reason for this is simple: Our safety and our security must be protected throughout the entire process. It would be ideal if we could simply snap our fingers and stop using petroleum today. But that is a pipe dream, not a policy. There are no silver bullets, and we cannot allow the perfect to be the enemy of the good-especially when faced with very real dangers to our economic and national security.

Energy and climate change are related issues. That said, it is important to emphasize that the fundamental goal of reducing oil intensity is a distinct one that needs to be considered based on its own merits and the very real dangers of inaction. Put simply, pricing carbon as a stand-alone policy, whether through a tax or a cap-and-trade system, will not allow us to reach that goal. Carbon pricing will almost automatically target the power industry in general and coal in particular. The power industry, however, is responsible for a fairly small percentage of the petroleum we consume as a nation. So pricing carbon will not meaningfully affect the price of oil, the demand for oil, and therefore oil dependence.

All you have to do is to watch the nightly news and look at the enormous human cost and the cost in national wealth of prosecuting these wars in the Middle East. And any way you slice it, in large measures they are related to our dependence on foreign petroleum. There are other issues, to be sure; but, just as Alan Greenspan said in his book, ''neat,'' you know, the situation was about oil. And if we continue along the road we've been on these last 40 years, we're going to get into a major national security confrontation that makes these things that we've been in, here the last few years, pale in comparison. So, I think every American can understand that issue by just simply relating to what we've been involved in, the last few years, and watching the enormous human cost of these involvements that we have in areas of the world which we wouldn't necessarily be involved in if we weren't as dependent on foreign petroleum. We have other issues and other interests, but I think they would not require the level of boots on the ground that we've been forced to get into there in these last two wars.

RICHARD G. LUGAR, U.S. SENATOR FROM INDIANA. For the better part of 50 or 60 years, our foreign policy had been deeply entwined with oil, in one form or another. Despite past campaigns for energy independence and the steady improvement in energy intensity per dollar of GDP, we are more dependent on oil imports today than we were during the oil shocks of the 1970s.

Now, we could have made a case for bringing democracy and human rights and education for children, and so forth, to a number of countries, but some would say, ''This is, at best, sort of a second or third order of rationalization as to why you were there to begin with and what sort of wars you engendered by your physical presence.'' And why were we there? Well, in large part because we were attempting, as President Carter expressed in the Carter Doctrine, to make certain we cannot be displaced from oil sources that were vital to our economy throughout that period of time. We put people in harm's way to make sure that all of those vital things occurred, did the best we could to rationalize that we were doing a lot of other good things while we were in the area. And that still is the case.

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Energy Security: Historical perspectives and Modern challenges. Senate hearing 2009

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In this hearing former President Carter was brought in by the Senate to help them cope with the energy crisis. Carter said that no one but the President can educate the public about the energy crisis and "explain to them their own personal and national interest in controlling the excessive influx of oil and our dependence on uncertain sources.

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Plus de 100 interviews réalisées, 175 000 caractères soit l'équivalent de 20 pleines pages du Temps: la dernière enquête du New York Times Magazine est à la mesure de son enjeu, immense. Avec le soutien de la Fondation Pulitzer, le grand quotidien américain a tout simplement voulu retracer comment la planète avait raté son rendez-vous avec le climat, comment, malgré les efforts de plusieurs lanceurs d'alerte, et pas mal de bonne volonté, y compris des industries pétrolières et des républicains à une époque, rien n'a été fait aux Etats-Unis, plus gros émetteur de dioxyde de carbone du monde, pour stopper le changement climatique quand c'était encore possible.

Lire sur le site du "New York Times": Losing Earth: The Decade We Almost Stopped Climate Change, un long-format de Nathaniel Rich, avec des photos et des vidéos de George Steinmetz)

Tout s'est joué de 1979 à 1989, "une décennie au cours de laquelle nous avions de bonnes chances de résoudre la crise climatique" écrit le journal. On savait déjà presque tout sur le réchauffement climatique en 1979, quand à Genève, en février, lors de la première Conférence mondiale sur le climat, les scientifiques de 50 pays unanimes estimèrent qu'il était "urgent d'agir". Pendant 10 ans se sont succédé séances et conférences de tout niveau, jusqu'à cet autre sommet aux Pays-Bas en novembre 1989 au cours duquel aurait dû être approuvé un traité imposant des objectifs. Mais cela n'a pas été le cas. C'est aux raisons de cet échec que s'attache le journal - dans une enquête historique qui a occupé le journaliste Nathaniel Rich à temps plein pendant dix-huit mois.

I - 1979-1982

Printemps 1979: un militant inquiet

Quelques héros émergent de la petite galaxie d'experts qui ont travaillé sur le climat aux Etats-Unis à cette époque. Le premier est un activiste de l'organisation Les amis de la Terre, Rafe Pomerance, que ses études d'histoire à Cornell ne destinaient en rien à devenir le héraut de la lutte contre les émissions de carbone. C'est en lisant dans un rapport technique parmi d'autres que "la poursuite de l'usage des énergies fossiles pourrait apporter un changement significatif et porteur de dégâts d'ici à 20 à 30 ans" qu'il tique. Choqué, ne trouvant pas d'information - on est bien avant internet -, il contacte un géophysicien cité dans un journal qu'il a trouvé: Gordon MacDonald, membre des Jasons, cette mystérieuse coterie de scientifiques de très haut vol qui conseillent la CIA, la NASA et les présidents américains. MacDonald a conseillé Eisenhower sur l'exploration spatiale, avant de s'intéresser au carbone pour Kennedy puis pour Nixon. La question le taraude depuis le début des années 1960, et il est ravi qu'enfin quelqu'un saisisse son importance. Le tandem va multiplier les rencontres, les conférences et les interviews, bien déterminé à éveiller les consciences, le lobbyste de 32 ans qui sait organiser un événement et l'influent physicien touche-à-tout, maître du sujet. Ce sont eux qui obtiennent du Bureau présidentiel de la politique scientifique qu'un comité scientifique indépendant décide en toute autonomie si leur alarme est justifiée, sous la responsabilité du père de la météorologie moderne, Jule Charney.

Automne 1979: une mobilisation cahin-caha

Le troisième héros est un mathématicien de la NASA, futur directeur du principal laboratoire de l'agence spatiale, le prestigieux Goddard Institute. Jim Hansen modélise les "mondes miroirs" qui permettent d'élaborer des projections des effets possibles des émissions de carbone sur la Terre, des "modèles de circulation générale" qu'il est possible d'accélérer, contrairement au monde réel. Le rapport Charney, qui servira de référence pendant toute cette période, les utilise pour conclure que, après prise en compte de tout le savoir disponible sur les océans, l'air et les énergies fossiles, le doublement des seuils de carbone dans l'atmosphère, qui va forcément se produire, entraînera une hausse de la température globale de trois degrés - un degré de moins que ce que prédit Hansen, un degré de plus que ce que prédit Akio Arakawa, un autre modéliste du climat. Jimmy Carter demande dans la foulée à l'Académie des sciences de plancher sur des mesures.

Ce qui ressort de l'époque est la difficulté de mobiliser autour d'un phénomène qui ne pourra être ressenti que lorsqu'il sera déjà trop tard. Le récit d'un atelier avec des politiciens et des scientifiques, en compagnie de Rafe Pomerance et Gordon MacDonald, en 1980, dans un magnifique hôtel sur une plage de Floride, est à ce titre édifiant. L'atelier devait accoucher de mesures concrètes à proposer. Un participant rappelle que même si les Etats-Unis stoppaient toute émission de carbone cette année-là, ça ne retarderait le doublement du seuil que de cinq ans. Un autre se demande si le réchauffement doit vraiment les inquiéter - "Do we care?" "Il faut cesser toute extraction de charbon et de pétrole" pour un troisième. "Il faut un retrait ordonné des énergies fossiles vers les renouvelables", corrige immédiatement le représentant d'Exxon - oui, Exxon, car un des mérites de l'enquête du New York Times est de mettre en évidence que les industries pétrolières étaient ouvertes aux questions de climat à l'époque et leur consacraient des programmes de recherche - même si la question qui les intéressait était légèrement différente: de quelle part de réchauffement Exxon pourrait-il être accusé...

Les discussions qui entourent la rédaction du communiqué final sont surréalistes: le changement climatique "va probablement avoir lieu", dit l'un; "va presque sûrement avoir lieu", corrige un autre - "est encore mal déterminé", préfère un troisième... Il n'y aura pas de communiqué final. Quatre jours plus tard, Ronald Reagan est élu. "Et très vite Rafe Pomerance, qui pensait être au début de quelque chose, s'est aperçu que c'était déjà la fin", écrit le quotidien.

1980-1981: malgré la blitzkrieg de Ronald Reagan, la mobilisation grandit

"Son élection nous rend fous de joie", aurait dit le président de l'Association nationale du charbon. Quand le Conseil pour l'environnement, une institution gouvernementale, transmet à Reagan un rapport avertissant "que les énergies fossiles pouvaient altérer de façon permanente et désastreuse l'atmosphère de la Terre, avec un réchauffement de la Terre et des effets très graves", le président envisage... de supprimer le conseil. Son administration demande au directeur de l'Agence de recherche sur l'énergie solaire de démissionner. Une "blitzkrieg", écrit le New York Times. Cette violence inquiète au sein même du Parti républicain. Rafe Pomerance, toujours lui, comprend qu'il faut un événement fort pour frapper l'opinion. Il prend contact avec un sénateur qui a déjà organisé une audition consacrée à l'effet de serre, un démocrate dont on entendra beaucoup reparler: Albert Gore Jr, dit Al Gore, 33 ans à l'époque, ancien élève à Harvard de Revelle, le scientifique qui a travaillé sur la bombe atomique, et collègue de MacDonald.

A la tête d'un obscur sous-comité au sein de la Commission pour la science et la technologie, Al Gore sait que les problèmes d'environnement ont le potentiel de devenir populaires - on y trouve des méchants, des victimes et des héros. Excès de sel dans l'alimentation, chercheurs faussant leurs résultats, ces sujets font frémir. Sauf qu'il n'y a pas vraiment de méchants dans l'affaire climatique. Alors que sa première audition n'a pas eu d'écho, Al Gore en organise une nouvelle, avec Jim Hansen dans le rôle du scientifique lanceur d'alerte. "Est-ce que je vais voir ce changement climatique, lui demande le démocrate, ou est-ce que cela sera mes enfants? Réponse du mathématicien: "Probablement vos enfants. Pour vous, je ne sais pas, mais vous avez l'air plutôt jeune. Il est plus tard que vous ne le pensez."

Cette fois c'est le jackpot. Dan Rather consacre 3 minutes de son CBS Evening News à l'effet de serre. Pas de quoi pousser l'administration Reagan à recommencer à financer les travaux de Jim Hansen, brutalement stoppés. Mais une ouverture semble se dessiner avec Exxon, dont le directeur du département de recherche, un ancien conseiller scientifique de Robert Nixon, se prononce résolument lors d'un symposium public en faveur d'un nouveau modèle d'énergie, reconnaissant que le système capitaliste était "moins que satisfaisant" pour gérer l'effet de serre, et affirmant qu'Exxon allait "inventer" un nouvel avenir d'énergies renouvelables. Pour Hansen, jamais l'administration Reagan ne pourrait s'élever contre Exxon. Le combat devenait politique.

II - 1983-1989

1983-1984: l'exceptionnalisme américain contre le changement climatique

Mais tout se fige à l'automne 1983, écrit le New York Times. L'Académie nationale des sciences chargée en 1979 par Jimmy Carter de proposer des solutions s'est mise au travail, ce qui permet au gouvernement Reagan de temporiser à chaque question sur le sujet: il faut attendre la réponse des savants.

Celle-ci est présentée en octobre 1983 lors d'un grand gala, en présence de scientifiques mais aussi des responsables d'Exxon ou de General Motors - mais sans Rafe Pomerance, non invité. Celui-ci réussit à s'introduire dans un briefing pour la presse et récupère un exemplaire du gros rapport de 500 pages Changer le climat- pour découvrir qu'il n'apporte absolument rien de nouveau. Le rapporteur William Nierenberg écrit certes dans les conclusions qu'il faut agir immédiatement, mais ce n'est pas ce qu'il dit ensuite dans les médias, raconte le New York Times. C'est même l'opposé: il n'y a pas de besoin urgent d'agir, "il ne faut pas entretenir les spéculations les plus négatives dans la population. De la prudence, mais pas de panique." Nierenberg est un optimiste croyant à l'exceptionnalisme américain, un de ces savants d'élite qui ont aidé à gagner une guerre mondiale, inventer la bombe atomique, créer l'industrie aérospatiale et l'informatique. Pour lui, l'Amérique a toujours résolu les problèmes existentiels qu'elle a rencontrés, et ce n'est pas un excès de dioxyde de carbone qui changera ça.

Les dégâts de ce rapport sont immenses. "Le message d'un panel de super-scientifiques au peuple inquiet du célèbre réchauffement climatique: vous pouvez faire avec", titre le Wall Street Journal, comme toute la presse. "Seule action recommandée: continuer la recherche", claironne le conseiller scientifique de Reagan, qui critique en même temps "l'alarmisme non indispensable" de l'Agence pour la protection de l'environnement.

1985: le trou d'ozone contre le réchauffement

Peu après, Exxon revoit sa position et annonce que "le consensus général est que la société a suffisamment de temps pour trouver une solution technologique adaptée à l'effet de serre". Si même l'académie pense que plus de régulations ne s'imposent pas, pourquoi Exxon devrait-il s'en faire?! Quelques mois après Changer le climat, Pomerance démissionne des Amis de la Terre.

La découverte du "trou dans la couche d'ozone" au-dessus de l'Antarctique, via un article dans Nature, va un peu changer la donne. L'image fait tout de suite tilt, associée à une hausse des cancers de la peau, une baisse des récoltes agricoles et du plancton. Jafe Pomerance reprend du service, organise quelques événements et, deux mois plus tard seulement, l'administration Reagan propose une diminution des gaz CFC de 95% et le Sénat ratifie la Convention de Vienne - alors que plus de 500 sociétés travaillant avec les CFC étaient montées au créneau. Tout le monde est convaincu que la lutte contre le réchauffement climatique est relancée et obtiendra le même succès que la couche d'ozone.

1987-1988: la censure de la science, et le brûlant été 1988

C'est donc très optimiste que Jim Hansen participe à une conférence parlementaire technique, Se préparer au changement climatique, dans un Quality Inn à deux pas du Capitole. Sont conviés des vétérans de la lutte contre le réchauffement comme Gordon MacDouglas, mais aussi des représentants de l'Union européenne, de l'Union soviétique et, bien visibles, de l'industrie pétrolière. Et c'est ainsi que ce 28 octobre 1988 on voit des pétroliers plaisanter avec des climatologues, et des législateurs trinquer avec des scientifiques.

D'où l'intense surprise du mathématicien lorsque la Maison-Blanche exige un vendredi soir des changements dans un témoignage prévu au Congrès le lundi - la règle veut que les officiels se fassent relire. Comment censurer un fait scientifique? Ne voyant pas d'autre possibilité, Hansen décide de témoigner non comme officiel mais comme simple citoyen - il devient pour l'occasion "scientifique du climat, New York", alors qu'il est le directeur d'un des programmes de la NASA... Dans ses discours, la Maison-Blanche continue de se montrer en faveur d'un accord et, en mars 1988, Ronald Reagan signe un accord avec Mikhaïl Gorbatchev qui les engage à coopérer sur le réchauffement climatique.

L'été 1988 accélère la prise de conscience, cet été le plus sec et le plus chaud de l'histoire américaine. Incendies géants en Alaska, à Yellowstone... Pour la première fois de son histoire, Harvard doit fermer, en raison de la chaleur. Un immeuble de Los Angeles prend feu spontanément. Hansen a maintenant les signes qui lui manquaient. Le 22 juin 1988 il est de nouveau appelé à témoigner au Sénat, par 37°. "Le réchauffement peut être détecté avec 99% de certitude. Il change notre climat. Il est temps d'arrêter de tergiverser, l'effet de serre est là." Toute la presse entend enfin le message et le New York Times titre le lendemain: "Les experts annoncent au Sénat que le réchauffement climatique a commencé".

Eté 1988: la conférence de Toronto, le "Woodstock du climat"

Un vent d'optimisme suit "l'audition Hansen", qui créée une onde de choc. D'autant que 4 jours plus tard a lieu la Conférence mondiale de Toronto sur le changement atmosphérique, ce que le New York Times appelle à l'époque le "Woodstock du changement climatique". A Toronto, 400 participants, scientifiques et politiques, s'engagent dans la déclaration finale pour une diminution de 20% des émissions à l'horizon 2005. Et la campagne électorale s'empare du sujet. Dukakis le démocrate propose des déductions fiscales anti-charbon et pétrole, tandis que Bush se dit environnementaliste: "Ceux qui pensent que nous sommes sans armes face à l'effet de serre oublient l'effet Maison-Blanche." Chez les industriels du charbon et du gaz, c'est la résignation: fin 1988, 32 textes sur le climat ont été introduits au Congrès.

Dans le même temps, ça discute ferme en Allemagne, en Norvège, et même dans la Grande-Bretagne de Margaret Thatcher, l'ancienne chimiste qui déclare que "la santé de notre économie et celle de notre environnement dépendent complètement l'une de l'autre".

C'est à cette époque que l'ONU et l'Organisation météorologique mondiale lancent conjointement le GIEC - le Groupe d'experts intergouvernemental sur l'évolution du climat, pour préparer un futur traité global. "Le temps ne fera pas disparaître le problème", leur dit James Baker, tout nouveau secrétaire d'Etat. Pas besoin de nouvelles mesures, il faut agir de suite, demande un groupe bipartisan de 24 sénateurs.

1989: la Maison-Blanche se rebiffe

Peu après ses propos audacieux au GIEC, James Baker reçoit la visite du chef du personnel de la Maison-Blanche, John Sununu. "Laissez tomber, lui dit-il, vous ne savez pas de quoi vous parlez." Gouverneur du New Hampshire, Sununu incarne le conservatisme yankee, écrit le New York Times, c'est un ingénieur du MIT pragmatique, favorable au business, technocrate, et doté d'un redoutable flair politique. Sununu se frotte aussi avec le chef de l'Agence de protection de l'environnement, pour qui les Etats-Unis doivent muscler leur discours à la prochaine réunion du GIEC à Genève le mois suivant. Mais Sununu n'est pas d'accord. "Ce serait fou de se lier les mains", dit-il. Il exige que les délégués américains ne prennent aucun engagement à Genève - l'échange fuite ensuite dans la presse, ce qui le rend furieux.

Le mathématicien de la NASA Hansen une nouvelle fois convoqué au Sénat est affolé par les passages supprimés ou ajoutés par la Maison-Blanche dans son projet d'intervention. Il veut tout abandonner, mais Al Gore le persuade: Hansen lira son texte expurgé - et répondra aux questions de Gore que son intervention a été censurée et transformée. "Selon un scientifique, la Maison-Blanche a déformé son témoignage", titre le New York Times. "C'est une forme de fraude scientifique", tonne Gore, qui tient enfin son méchant, le censeur anonyme de la Maison-Blanche. Censeur qui bien sûr fait plus pour populariser le témoignage de Hansen que tout ce qu'il aurait pu dire d'affolant sur le réchauffement...

Novembre 1989: l'enterrement définitif à Noordwijk

A la Maison-Blanche, les relations s'enveniment entre le chef de l'Agence de l'environnement et John Sununu, chacun tentant d'empêcher l'autre d'avancer. Jusqu'à la conférence ministérielle de Noordwijk, aux Pays-Bas, en novembre 1989. L'atmosphère générale est qu'au minimum, les délégations s'entendront sur un gel des émissions de gaz à effet de serre, maintenues en 2000 au seuil de 1990. Rafe Pomerance bien sûr a fait le voyage. Il ne fait pas partie des 400 délégués invités, mais s'est débrouillé pour être là avec trois autres militants du climat. Leur objectif est de convaincre les délégués d'adopter l'objectif de Toronto, -20% d'ici à 2005. Ils ont l'oreille des Néerlandais, inquiets d'une hausse du niveau de la mer qui mettrait en péril une bonne partie de leur pays. La rumeur veut que les Américains essaient de persuader les Japonais et les Soviétiques de ne pas signer de texte contraignant. Pour faire bouger les lignes, Pomerance et ses compères organisent une rencontre de la presse avec un responsable de l'atoll pacifique de Kiribati. "Aucun endroit n'est plus élevé que ma tête, explique l'homme, qui mesure dans les 1,60 m. Donc si l'eau monte d'un pied, elle m'arrive au mollet. De deux pieds - à la cuisse. De trois pieds - à la taille. Et de quatre pieds... Suis-je clair"? Pomerance et ses amis sont en extase devant l'effet produit par le petit homme.

Mais Pomerance ne parvient pas à assister à la séance qui compte le plus, celle des ministres de l'Environnement, qui auront le dernier mot. Et voilà que la négociation dure, dure. Commencée le matin, elle s'achève après minuit. Sur un échec total. "Votre gouvernement a tout fait foirer", gémit entre deux portes le ministre suédois. Les Etats-Unis avec l'approbation de la Grande-Bretagne, du Japon et des Soviétiques ont forcé la conférence à abandonner l'objectif d'un gel des émissions. La déclaration finale note simplement que "plusieurs" nations soutiennent la stabilisation des émissions. Sans préciser quels pays ni le niveau d'émissions.

"Un désastre", pour Greenpeace. "Washington n'est pas un partenaire mais un voyou", selon le directeur de l'Agence pour l'environnement, furibard. Plus diplomate, Pomerance souligne que George Bush n'a pas rempli sa promesse électorale de prendre en main le réchauffement climatique, mais il note aussi que l'accord est un premier pas; après tout, c'est la première fois que les Etats-Unis admettent le concept de limite des émissions.

Bientôt un film

Tout n'est pas inédit dans l'enquête du New York Magazine. Jim Hansen, par exemple, avait déjà raconté comment la Maison-Blanche avait tenté d'expurger ses témoignages. L'ex-ingénieur de la NASA est aujourd'hui une des figures emblématiques de la lutte contre le changement climatique aux Etats-Unis, il s'est même fait arrêter dans plusieurs manifestations dénonçant l'inertie des pouvoirs politiques. Le soin de la présidence de Ronald Reagan à effacer toutes les avancées de la présidence de Jimmy Carter en matière d'environnement était connu aussi, ainsi que l'incurie de George Bush. Tout n'est pas inédit, mais le récit implacablement chronologique de Nathanael Rich, la méticulosité de son enquête et la richesse de ses points de vue donnent le vertige. Pendant ces dix années, on a frôlé la mise en branle du monde.

"Tout le monde sait depuis 40 ans", déplore le journal, qui épingle au passage les industriels de l'énergie depuis l'échec de 1989. "Même si dans les années 1970 et 1980 ce n'étaient pas des bons samaritains, ils ne lançaient pas des campagnes à plusieurs millions pour faire de la désinformation, corrompre les scientifiques et laver le cerveau des écoliers comme leurs successeurs allaient le faire."

Apple vient d'annoncer qu'il produirait sous forme de série l'enquête du New York Times. Avec ses scientifiques se frottant au politique pour se faire entendre, ses Géo Trouvetout de l'environnement et ses industriels méchants fossoyeurs du monde, le texte répond à tous les codes des best-sellers - comme le film animé par Al Gore, Une vérité qui dérange, qui a participé de son Prix Nobel de la paix en 2007, avec les scientifiques du GIEC. The show must go on.

Pour en savoir plus

"Le climat de la Suisse au cours du XXIe siècle sera radicalement différent". Entretien avec la vice-secrétaire générale de l'Organisation météorologique mondiale, Elena Manaenkova (août 2018)

Tous nos articles sur le climat

Et ce petit film de Franz Capra faisant partie de la série L'heure de la science, signalé par le New York Times, qui date de 1958 et qui a régulièrement été montré dans les écoles.

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Comment nous avons perdu le combat contre le changement climatique

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Le "New York Times" vient de publier une très longue enquête pour rendre compte des atermoiements côté américain qui ont empêché l'émergence de mesures fortes pour réduire les émissions de carbone quand il en était encore temps, entre 1979 et 1989.

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Le président américain Donald Trump, ouvertement climato-sceptique, a mélangé météo et réchauffement climatique, alors qu'une vague de froid extrême touche les États-Unis.

Le nord de l'Amérique est balayé par une vague de froid extrême, avec des températures jusqu'à -40°C. Dans ce contexte, le président américain Donald Trump s'est fendu d'un (nouveau) tweet polémique.

"Dans l'Est, on pourrait avoir la veille du jour de l'an LA PLUS FROIDE jamais enregistrée. Peut-être qu'on pourrait utiliser un peu de ce bon vieux réchauffement climatique que notre pays, mais aucun autre, s'apprêtait à combattre à coups DE TRILLIONS DE DOLLARS. Couvrez-vous!", a-t-il écrit sur son compte personnel, ce vendredi.

Ironie pour brosser dans le sens du poil ses électeurs qui contestent le changement climatique, ou profonde méconnaissance de la différence entre météo et climatologie? Si le doute est permis, c'est que le milliardaire de 71 ans est un fervent climato-sceptique. Pendant la campagne présidentielle américaine, il avait déclaré que "le concept de réchauffement climatique" avait été "créé par et pour les Chinois dans le but de rendre l'industrie américaine non-compétitive".

Depuis son élection, il a aussi drastiquement réduit le budget de la Nasa alloué à la surveillance du réchauffement climatique, et a menacé de se retirer de l'Accord de Paris sur le climat, estimant qu'il pourrait détruire des emplois industriels américains.

"Non, Donald, météorologie et climatologie ne sont pas comparables"

De très nombreux internautes et scientifiques ont en tout cas tenté d'expliquer au président Donald J. Trump comment le réchauffement climatique fonctionne, et pourquoi il ne faut pas confondre météorologie et climatologie. En bref, que ce n'est pas parce qu'il fait particulièrement froid dans une région donnée que la planète ne se réchauffe pas globalement.

LIRE AUSSI >> Climat: comment Al Gore avait (presque) tout prévu de 2017... Il y a 11 ans

"Croyez-le ou non, le changement climatique est bien réel, même s'il fait froid à l'extérieur de la Tour Trump en ce moment. De la même manière qu'il y a toujours des personnes qui meurent de faim dans le monde, même si vous venez de manger un Big Mac", a par exemple lancé le directeur de l'Académie des Sciences de Californie, Jon Foley, sur Twitter.

"La météo, ce n'est pas la même chose que le climat. Le président devrait pouvoir comprendre ça. Ce n'est pas difficile", a renchéri la députée démocrate de l'État de Washington, Pramila Jayapal.

2017 plus chaude que 2016, plus chaude que 2015, plus chaude que 2014

Le réchauffement climatique fait aujourd'hui consensus au sein de la communauté scientifique internationale, d'autant que les relevés de températures (globales) de ces dernières années sont sans appel.

Selon l'Organisation météorologique mondiale (OMM), 2017 devrait être l'année la plus chaude jamais enregistrée sur l'ensemble de la planète. Elle battrait ainsi le record de... 2016, qui avait elle-même pulvérisé les records de chaleur de 2015, qui avait pulvérisé ceux de 2014.

Ce qui n'a pas empêché l'administration Trump de retirer le changement climatique de la liste "des menaces" pour les États-Unis et de relancer l'exploitation du charbon et des réserves jugées de gaz et d'huile de schiste sur des terres fédérales protégées.

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Trump se moque du réchauffement climatique parce qu'il fait très froid en ce moment

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Le nord de l'Amérique est balayé par une vague de froid extrême, avec des températures jusqu'à -40°C. Dans ce contexte, le président américain Donald Trump s'est fendu d'un (nouveau) tweet polémique. "Dans l'Est, on pourrait avoir la veille du jour de l'an LA PLUS FROIDE jamais enregistrée.

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I.
a)définition réchauffement climatique Causes/conséquences

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all about J. Carter and the climat change

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all about J. Carter and the climat change

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http://energyskeptic.com/category/expert-biophysical/government-expert-biophysical/president-jimmy-carter/

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https://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/11/opinion/sunday/climate-change-lessons-from-ronald-reagan.html

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https://www.lemonde.fr/cop21/article/2015/10/22/hoax-climatique-3-dans-les-annees-1970-les-scientifiques-prevoyaient-un-refroidissement_4794858_4527432.html                                                       same en 1979  https://www.lemonde.fr/planete/article/2009/12/28/des-1979-le-rapport-charney-annoncait-le-rechauffement-climatique_1285427_3244.html

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1827. Première description de "l'effet de serre"
Le mathématicien et physicien français, Jean-Baptiste Fourier, a recours à l'analogie de la serre pour décrire le phénomène naturel de rétention partielle des radiations solaires par l'atmosphère.

1873. Fondation de l'OMI
L'Organisation météorologique internationale (OMI) est fondée à Vienne. Début des observations météorologiques standardisées.

1967. Premières prévisions d'un réchauffement planétaire
Deux scientifiques prévoient le doublement de la concentration de CO2 d'ici le début du XXIème siècle et une élévation de la température moyenne de 2,5 degrés.

1979. Première conférence mondiale sur le climat à Genève
Lancement d'un Programme de recherche climatologique mondial, confié à l'Organisation météorologique mondiale (OMM), au Programme des Nations unies pour l'environnement (PNUE) et au Conseil international des unions scientifiques (CIUS).

1988. Création du GIEC
Le Groupe intergouvernemental sur l'évolution du climat (GIEC, IPCC en anglais), placé sous l'égide du PNUE et de l'OMM, est chargé du suivi scientifique des processus de réchauffement climatique.

Décembre 1989-janvier 1990. 2ème conférence mondiale sur le climat : La Haye
La conférence réunit 149 pays. Les douze Etats de la CEE (Communauté économique européenne) s'engagent à stabiliser leurs émissions de CO2 au niveau de 1990 d'ici à 2000. La déclaration finale préconise la mise en place de négociations en vue d'une convention internationale sur les changements climatiques.

1990. Premier rapport du GIEC (Groupe intergouvernemental sur l'évolution du climat)
Le rapport dresse le bilan des connaissances scientifiques sur les changements climatiques et leurs possibles répercussions sur l'environnement, l'économie, la société. Ce rapport a servi de base scientifique à la Convention-cadre sur le climat (Rio, 1992).

3-14 juin 1992. Sommet de la terre : Rio de Janeiro (Brésil)
131 chefs d'Etat réunis à Rio adoptent l'Agenda 21, liste de 2500 recommandations d'action pour le 21ème siècle.
La Convention-cadre des Nations unies sur les changements climatiques [pdf, 69 Ko] est ouverte à la signature. Son objectif est de stabiliser les concentrations atmosphériques de gaz à effet des serre à un niveau qui empêche toute perturbation humaine dangereuse du système climatique.
Après sa ratification par 50 Etats, la convention est entrée en vigueur le 21 mars 1994.

28 mars-7avril 1995. 1ère conférence des Parties à la Convention sur le climat (COP 1) : Berlin
Adoption du principe des quotas d'émissions de gaz à effet de serre.

Décembre 1995. Second rapport du GIEC
Le rapport confirme l'influence des activités humaines sur les changements climatiques et prévoit un réchauffement moyen de 1 à 3, 5 degrés d'ici à 2100 ainsi qu'une augmentation du niveau de la mer de 15 à 95 centimètres.

8-19 juillet 1996. 2ème Conférence des Nations unies sur les changements climatiques : Genève
Les représentants des gouvernements s'engagent à renforcer la lutte contre le réchauffement de la planète, en fixant des objectifs quantifiés légalement contraignant.

23-27 juin 1997. 2ème sommet de la terre : New York
La 19ème session extraordinaire de l'Assemblée générale des Nations unies (dite "Rio +5") fait le point sur les engagements pris à Rio cinq ans auparavant, et constate le désaccord entre l'Union européenne et les Etats-Unis sur la réduction des gaz à effet de serre.

1er-12 décembre 1997. 3ème Conférence des Nations unies sur les changements climatiques : Kyoto
Adoption d'un protocole à la Convention sur le climat dit "protocole de Kyoto" [pdf, 51 Ko] . Il engage les pays industrialisés regroupés dans l'annexe B du Protocole (38 pays industrialisés : Etats-Unis, Canada, Japon, pays de l'UE, pays de l'ancien bloc communiste) à réduire les émissions de gaz à effet de serre de 5, 2% en moyenne d'ici 2012, par rapport au niveau de 1990. Sous la pression d'un groupe de pays conduits par les Etats-Unis, des mécanismes de flexibilité sont créés, permettant à un pays de remplir ses obligations non pas en limitant ses émissions mais en finançant des réductions à l'étranger.

2-14 novembre 1998. 4ème Conférence des Nations unies sur les changements climatiques : Buenos Aires
La conférence est marquée par la confrontation entre les pays en développement et les pays industrialisés, seuls concernés dans un premier temps par la mise en œuvre du Protocole de Kyoto, et adopte un plan d'action destiné à relancer les mesures décidées à Kyoto. Les Etats-Unis tentent d'accélérer la mise en oeuvre des permis d'émission négociables. Ils s'opposent à tout compromis, mais signent le Protocole de Kyoto.

13-24 novembre 2000. 6ème Conférence des Nations unies sur les changements climatiques : La Haye
Les négociateurs des 182 pays représentés échouent à trouver un accord sur la mise en œuvre des mesures adoptées à Kyoto. Confrontation entre les Etats-Unis (et ses alliés : Canada, Australie, Nouvelle-Zélande, Japon) et l'Union européenne (qui plaide contre la prise en compte des puits de carbone, pour que 50% au moins des engagements pris soient réalisés à l'intérieur de chaque pays, pour la création d'une structure supranationale et pour l'instauration de sanctions contre les pays contrevenants).
Janvier 2001. Publication du troisième rapport du GIEC (Groupe intergouvernemental sur l'évolution du climat).
13 mars 2001. Les Etats-Unis renoncent à limiter leurs émissions de gaz à effet de serre.
Le nouveau président des Etats-Unis, G.W. Bush, annonce qu'il renonce à la réglementation des émissions de gaz à effet de serre et affirme son opposition au Protocole de Kyoto.

29 octobre-10 novembre 2001. 7ème Conférence des Nations unies sur les changements climatiques à Marrakech
Traduction juridique des règles de mise en oeuvre du Protocole de Kyoto. Création d'un comité ad hoc d'observance. Des moyens techniques et financiers sont débloqués en faveur des pays en développement.
31 mai 2002. L'Union européenne et ses 15 Etats membres ratifient le protocole de Kyoto. 4 juin 2002. Le Japon ratifie le protocole de Kyoto.
28 novembre-10 décembre 2005. 1ère réunion de suivi du protocole de Kyoto et 11ème Conférence des Nations unies sur les changements climatiques à Montréal (Canada).
- La conférence, qui a mobilisé près de 10 000 personnes et une centaine de ministres de l'environnement, entérine une série d'accords (les accords de Marrakech), qui établissent les règles de fonctionnement du Protocole de Kyoto, permettant la totalité de sa mise en oeuvre. Les marchés du carbone deviennent ainsi une réalité.
- Par ailleurs, la décision de négocier un prolongement du Protocole au-delà de son échéance de 2012 est prise. L'accord de dernière minute prévoyant que les négociations seront menées dans le cadre plus large de la convention-cadre des Nations unies sur les changements climatiques, les Etats-Unis, qui n'ont pas ratifié le Protocole, acceptent finalement de s'y associer.

Janvier 2006 : 2005, classée année la plus chaude
Un rapport émanant de la NASA (24 janvier 2006), constate que l'année 2005 a été la plus chaude depuis la fin du 19ème siècle. L'Organisation météorologique mondiale (OMM)[.pdf, 555ko] classait pour sa part, le 15 décembre 2005, l'année 2005 dans les deux plus chaudes depuis 1861, date du début des relevés de températures. La terre s'est réchauffée de 0,8 degré Celsius depuis un siècle et de 0,6 degré depuis 30 ans.

11-12 janvier 2006. 1ère réunion du Partenariat Asie-Pacifique sur le développement propre et le climat : Sydney (Australie)
Ce Partenariat, formé en juillet 2005, regroupe les Etats-Unis, l'Australie et quatre pays d'Asie : Chine, Japon, Inde et Corée du Sud. Ces pays représentent près de la moitié des émissions de gaz à effet de serre dans le monde, l'Australie et les Etats-Unis, ayant pour leur part refusé de ratifier le protocole de Kyoto sur la réduction des gaz à effet de serre. Le communiqué final mentionne que la lutte contre le réchauffement climatique ne doit pas freiner la croissance économique, et que la plus grosse partie de la lutte contre le réchauffement climatique reviendra au secteur privé.

2 février 2007. Publication, à Paris, du 1er volume du 4ème rapport sur le Changement climatique 2007 : les bases scientifiques physiques
Les scientifiques du Groupe d'experts des Nations unies établissent la responsabilité humaine dans le réchauffement climatique. Quatrième rapport d'une série commencée en 1990, c'est le bilan de six années de travaux menés par un réseau de 2 500 scientifiques. Les experts confirment le rôle des émissions de gaz à effet de serre et la gravité des changements en cours : perspective d'augmentation moyenne de 1,8°C à 4°C et hausse du niveau des océans de près de 60 cm d'ici la fin du siècle, généralisation de vagues de chaleur et d'épisodes de fortes précipitations. Réunis le 3 février à Paris à l'initiative du président français Jacques Chirac, 46 pays appellent à la création d'une Organisation des Nations unies pour l'environnement, projet contesté notamment par les Etats-Unis et les grands pays émergents.

6 avril 2007. Publication du 2ème volume du 4ème rapport "Bilan 2007 des changements climatiques : Impacts, adaptation et vulnérabilité" (Résumé à l'intention des décideurs, 19 p.)
Le GIEC (Groupe intergouvernemental sur l'évolution du climat) publie le deuxième volume de l'édition 2007 du rapport sur le changement climatique. Celui-ci établit un diagnostic alarmant des impacts du réchauffement climatique, malgré les réticences chinoises et américaines sur les conclusions, et notamment la demande américaine de retirer la quasi totalité des données chiffrées du résumé. Le GIEC insiste sur deux principaux messages : en premier lieu, le réchauffement déjà en cours frappera toutes les régions du monde, mais prioritairement les pays en développement d'Afrique et d'Asie. Par ailleurs, au-delà de 2 à 3 degrés de hausse par rapport à 1990, ce réchauffement aura des impacts négatifs.

Mai 2007. Création du Forum des économies majeures sur le changement climatique
Le président américain, G. W. Bush, lance le FEM (Forum des économies majeures sur le climat ), dans le but de concurrencer les négociations menées sous l'égide des Nations unies. Celui-ci rassemble les principaux pays pollueurs de la planète : l'Afrique du Sud, l'Allemagne, l'Australie, le Brésil, le Canada, la Chine, la Corée du Sud, la France, l'Inde, l'Indonésie, l'Italie, le Japon, le Mexique, la Russie, le Royaume-Uni, l'Union européenne et les Nations unies.

4 mai 2007. Publication, à Bangkok, du 3ème volume du 4ème rapport (2007) sur Le changement climatique 2007 : les mesures d'atténuation
Le rapport, approuvé par les 400 délégués du GIEC (Groupe intergouvernemental sur l'évolution du climat), juge qu'une action résolue contre le réchauffement aurait un coût relativement modéré mais que les 20 à 30 prochaines années seront déterminantes. La question des coûts domine toutefois les débats, marqués par de fortes divergences entre pays en développement et pays industrialisées.

12 octobre 2007. Le prix Nobel de la paix est attribué à l'ancien vice-président américain Al Gore, et au GIEC (Groupe intergouvernemental des Nations unies sur l'évolution du climat),
pour "leurs efforts de collecte et de diffusion des connaissances sur les changements climatiques provoqués par l'homme". Vice-président de Bill Clinton et ancien candidat démocrate à la Maison Blanche en 2000, Al Gore a réalisé un documentaire "Une vérité qui dérange".

17 novembre 2007. Publication du 4ème volume du rapport du Groupe intergouvernemental sur l'évolution du climat (GIEC) "Changement climatique 2007 : les mesures politiques".
Dans le résumé à l'intention des décideurs, le groupe d'experts sur le changement climatique, met en garde contre les conséquences "soudaines", voire "irréversibles" du réchauffement en cours. Le GIEC prévoit une hausse de température moyenne de 1,8 à 4 degrés, pouvant aller jusqu'à 6,4 degrés en 2100 par rapport à 1990.

3 décembre 2007. Ratification du protocole de Kyoto par l'Australie.
Les Etats-Unis sont désormais le seul pays industrialisé à n'avoir pas ratifié le Protocole de Kyoto.

3-14 décembre 2007. 13ème Conférence des Nations unies sur les changements climatiques : Bali (Indonésie).
Un accord est trouvé in extremis, à l'issue de deux semaines de négociations difficiles, sur la "feuille de route" qui doit aboutir en 2009, à Copenhague, à un nouveau traité. Celui-ci prendra la suite du Protocole de Kyoto sur la réduction des émissions des gaz à effet de serre, qui vient à échéance en 2012. Si les parties reconnaissent que "des réductions sévères des émissions mondiales devront être conduites", elles ne reprennent pas l'objectif de réduction de 25% à 40% des émissions de gaz à effet de serre d'ici à 2020 par les pays industrialisés, proposé par l'Union européenne, et rejeté par le gouvernement américain.

31 mars-4 avril 2008. Ouverture de nouvelles négociations internationales sur le changement climatique : Bangkok (Thaïlande).
Les délégués de 161 pays ouvrent un nouveau cycle de négociations sur le climat, dans le cadre de la Convention cadre des Nations unies sur les changements climatiques (CNUCC). Celui-ci devrait aboutir, lors de la conférence de Copenhague fixée à décembre 2009, à un accord mondial de réduction des émissions polluantes, censé prendre le relais du protocole de Kyoto qui expire en 2012.

1-13 décembre 2008. 14ème Conférence des Nations unies sur le climat : Poznam (Pologne).
Elle est consacrée à l'avancée des négociations sur le traité appelé à remplacer le protocole de Kyoto. L'un des principaux acquis réside dans la création d'un fonds d'aide aux pays pauvres menacés par les conséquences du réchauffement. Mais ce fonds ne devrait permettre de recueillir que 80 millions de dollars. Les pays en développement, notamment le Brésil et l'Inde, accusent les pays riches de ne pas suffisamment les aider à faire face aux conséquences du dérèglement climatique comme les sécheresses, les inondations, les épidémies et la montée du niveau des mers.

12 décembre 2008. Adoption du "paquet énergie climat" par le Conseil européen
Le Conseil européen de Bruxelles adopte un plan de lutte contre le réchauffement climatique pour la période 2013-2020 : diminution de 20% des émissions de gaz à effet de serre (GES), augmentation à 20% de la part des énergies renouvelables dans la consommation énergétique totale de l'UE et amélioration de 20% de l'efficacité énergétique de l'Union européenne.

18 février 2010. Annonce de la démission du secrétaire exécutif de la Convention cadre des Nations unies sur le changement climatique (CCNUCC), Yvo de Boer
Cette annonce, qui sera effective à partir du 1er juillet, survient deux mois après le semi-echec de Copenhague. Dans le même temps, le GIEC (Groupe intergouvernemental d'experts sur l'évolution du climat) fait l'objet de controverses concernant le débat scientifique ou la publication de données inexactes.

3-8 avril 2011. Conférence des Nations unies sur les changements climatiques, à Bangkok.
Les représentants de plus de 190 pays se retrouvent pour la reprise des pourparlers sur le changement climatique, en préparation de la conférence de Durban à la fin de 2011, dans un contexte marqué par la crise nucléaire au Japon et ses conséquences sur la lutte contre le réchauffement de la planète.

28 novembre-11 décembre 2011. Accord pour un nouveau pacte mondial sur le climat en 2015, lors de la conférence de Durban II en Afrique du Sud.
La 17ème conférence des Nations unies sur le climat réunissant 190 pays s'achève par une feuille de route pour un accord prévoyant d'établir d'ici à 2015 un pacte global de réduction des émissions de gaz à effet de serre dont l'entrée en vigueur est prévue à l'horizon 2020. Le texte englobe pour la première fois tous les pays dans la lutte contre le réchauffement climatique, notamment les plus gros pollueurs, la Chine, l'Inde et les Etats-Unis. Il ne prévoit toutefois ni contrainte juridique, ni hausse du niveau des mesures pour réduire les émissions de gaz à effet de serre, afin de limiter le réchauffement sous le seuil de 2°C. Les organisations non gouvernementales critiquent à l'unanimité l'absence de nouveaux engagements concrets. La feuille de route prévoit également la prolongation du protocole de Kyoto - qui fixe des objectifs de réduction des gaz à effet de serre à une quarantaine de pays industrialisés, après son expiration prévue fin 2012. La décision de Durban fixe une deuxième période dont la durée (5 ou 8 ans) doit encore être débattue. Toutefois, si l'Union européenne s'engage dans cette voie, le Canada, la Russie et le Japon refusent cette prolongation. De surcroit, le Canada annonce, le 12 décembre, son intention de se retirer dès à présent du protocole de Kyoto. Enfin, un Fonds vert pour le climat, mécanisme financier acté à la conférence de Cancun en 2010 et destiné à aider les pays pauvres à faire face au réchauffement climatique, est officiellement créé.

20-22 juin 2012. Sommet de la terre dit "Rio + 20", à Rio de Janeiro (Brésil).
Vingt ans après le Sommet de 1992 qui a fait de l'environnement une priorité mondiale, le sommet des Nations unies sur le développement durable, précédé par des mois de discussions et de négociations, réunit 130 pays. Présidé par la chef de l'Etat brésilien, Dilma Rousseff, le sommet s'achève avec l'adoption d'un compromis à minima, alors que le rapport "Geo-5" établi par le Programme des Nations unies pour l'environnement (PNUE) établit que, sur 90 objectifs prioritaires en 1992, seulement quatre ont connu des progrès significatifs, dont celui de la disparition des molécules portant atteinte à la couche d'ozone (les CFC notamment). L'objectif de réduction des émissions de gaz à effet de serre n'a, par contre, pas connu de progrès et ceux-ci devraient doubler d'ici 2050. Dans le communiqué final, "L'avenir que nous voulons", les Etats s'engagent à promouvoir une "économie verte" épargnant les ressources naturelles de la planète et éradiquant la pauvreté, mais les critiques sont nombreuses sur l'absence d'objectifs contraignants et de financement. Les 25 domaines particulièrement ciblés vont de l'éradication de la pauvreté, la sécurité alimentaire, l'eau, l'énergie, le transport, la santé, l'emploi, aux océans, au changement climatique, à la consommation et la production durables.

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relations internationales - 	environnement

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Chronologie - Le changement climatique - Dossiers - La Documentation française

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Chronologie - Prenant acte de la réalité du réchauffement climatique dans la décennie 90, et de la responsabilité humaine dans ces déréglements, les dirigeants politiques ont initié une politique de lutte contre le réchauffement de la planète.

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1977 Carter->
1981 Reagan->
1989 G H W Bush ->
1993 Clinton -> resarch
2001 G W Bush -> research but disdam

2009 Obama -> aides + lois
2017 Trump -> climatoseptique

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the Kyoto Protocol, an international treaty signed in 1997 in Kyoto, Japan

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Définition clim 2

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Définition : climato-sceptique - Le dictionnaire Cordial, Dictionnaire de français - French dictionary, nom

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climato-sceptique - Définition en français : définitions de climato-sceptique, synonymes de climato-sceptique, difficultés, lexique, nom. Definition of climato-sceptique in the french dictionary.Que signifie climato-sceptique ?

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Le rejet du protocole de Kyoto

Le 13 mars 2001, le président américain G. W. Bush, annonçait le refus des Etats-Unis de réglementer leurs émissions de gaz à effet de serre et leur rejet du protocole de Kyoto. Sa position a été formulée dans une lettre adressée à quatre sénateurs républicains opposés au Protocole.

" Comme vous le savez, je suis opposé au protocole de Kyoto parce qu'il exempte 80% du monde, notamment des pays très peuplés tels que la Chine et l'Inde, et parce qu'il porterait gravement atteinte à l'économie des Etats-Unis. Le vote du Sénat (95 voix contre 0) montre que les sénateurs sont d'avis que le protocole de Kyoto constitue un moyen injuste et inefficace de faire face aux préoccupations relatives aux changements climatiques mondiaux.
Comme vous le savez, je suis en faveur d'une politique énergétique nationale qui soit équilibrée et qui tienne compte de la nécessité d'améliorer la qualité de l'air. En conséquence, j'ai l'intention d'oeuvrer de concert avec le Congrès en vue de l'élaboration d'une stratégie exigeant que les centrales réduisent leurs émissions d'anhydride sulfureux, d'oxydes d'azote et de mercure. Une telle stratégie devrait prévoir une réduction progressive des émissions au cours d'une période de temps raisonnable, tout en offrant une certitude sur le plan réglementaire et des incitations commerciales visant à aider ce secteur à remplir les objectifs fixés. Toutefois, je ne pense pas que l'Etat doive exiger que les centrales réduisent leurs émissions de gaz carbonique, car ce gaz n'est pas un "polluant" selon la loi sur la salubrité de l'air. "

Source : Bureau des programmes d'information internationale du département d'Etat américain

Des mesures fédérales

" Les Etats-Unis, malgré leur position en dehors du protocole de Kyoto, ont quant à eux mis en place un certain nombre de mesures, en faisant le choix de miser sur le déploiement des technologies existantes et la recherche et développement de technologies existantes et la recherche et développement de technologies d'avenir. Ils ont investi dans ce modèle à la fois chez eux et à l'échelle internationale, via des partenariats d'échange d'informations ou de bonnes pratiques, et de recherche conjointe, sur la sequestration du carbone, l'énergie basée sur l'hydrogène, la gestion du méthane. L'exemple le plus significatif de cette philosophie est le partenariat Asie-Pacifique sur le développement propre et le climat mis en place en 2005 avec l'Australie, le Canada, la Chine, l'Inde, le Japon et la Corée du Sud. Il s'agit à la fois d'un forum d'information mutuelle sur les technologies faibles en carbone et d'un moyen politique de convertir des pays peu disposés à une action ambitieuse contre le changement climatique à des modèles d'action moins contraignants. L'Union européenne est critique vis-à-vis de ce modèle américain de la "réponse technologique" et dénonce le refus des Etats-Unis de remettre en cause leurs habitudes de production et de consommation. " (Baptiste Legay, Divergences internationales sur les stratégies de réduction des émissions de gaz à effet de serre, Questions internationales n° 38, juillet-août 2009, La Documentation française)

Certaines mesures ont été prises :

- Clear Skies and Global Climate Change, le plan alternatif présenté par G. W. Bush le 14 février 2002, développe une approche graduelle, à moyen ou long terme, vis-à-vis du problème climatique.
- En mars 2005, un nouveau règlement antipollution de l'Agence fédérale pour la protection de l'environnement (EPA), intitulé Clean Air Interstate Rule (CAIR), applicable dans 28 Etats et à Washington, limite les rejets d'anhydride sulfureux et d'azote émis par les centrales électriques.
- Le 8 août 2005, une loi sur la politique de l'énergie reprend les mesures proposées lors de l'entrée en fonction du président Bush, visant à diversifier les sources d'énergie par une relance du nucléaire, du "charbon propre", et le développement de l'éthanol.
- En mai 2007, G. W. Bush lance le MEM (Major Economics Meeting on Energy Security and Climat Change) qui rassemble15 pays : l'Afrique du Sud, l'Allemagne, l'Australie, le Brésil, le Canada, la Chine, la Corée du Sud, la France, l'Inde, l'Indonésie, l'Italie, le Japon, le Mexique, la Russie, le Royaume-Uni, l'Union européenne et les Nations unies.

De nombreuses initiatives locales

- Une initiative régionale pour les gaz à effet de serre est ainsi signée, en décembre 2005, par sept Etats du nord-est des Etats-Unis. Cette stratégie vise à stabiliser les émissions en 2009 puis à les réduire à partir de 2016 par le plafonnement et l'échange de droits à polluer.
- Parallèlement au sommet de l'ONU sur le changement climatique de Montréal en décembre 2005, un collectif de près de 200 villes américaines signe un engagement pour réduire de 30% les émissions de dioxyde de carbone d'ici à 2020.
- La Californie adopte en septembre 2006 une loi sur le réchauffement climatique, qui prévoit conformément aux objectifs de Kyoto, de ramener les émissions de gaz à effet de serre au niveau de 1990 avant 2020.
- En février 2007, l'Arizona, la Californie, le Nouveau-Mexique, l'Oregon et l'Etat de Washington adoptent une Initiative régionale d'action des Etats de l'Ouest américain sur la question du climat, visant à intensifier la lutte contre les rejets de gaz dans tous les secteurs.

A partir de 2009, le tournant de l'administration Obama

En décembre 2005, lors de la 11ème Conférence des Nations unies sur les changements climatiques à Montréal, les Etats-Unis ont finalement accepté de s'associer aux négociations sur l'après-Kyoto pour un nouvel accord international à l'échéance 2012.

" Sur le plan politique, G.W. Bush a été de plus en plus isolé durant ses deux dernières années de mandat face aux initiatives multiples des Etats américains, du Congrès et aux positions des candidats à sa succession. Aux prises avec ces pressions politiques intérieures, il a fait marche arrière et a lancé diverses initiatives (comme le MEM) montrant que les Etats-Unis étaient intéressés par l'idée d'un accord post-2012.
L'arrivée de Barack Obama devrait changer la donne. Tout au long de sa campagne, il a mis l'accent sur l'environnement. Dans son discours d'investiture, il a affirmé que les Etats-Unis ne peuvent plus consommer les ressources planétaires sans se soucier des conséquences. Il a annoncé une participation très active de son administration aux négociations sur le changement climatique et confirmé son intention d'instaurer un système fédéral de quotas et d'échanges de droits d'émission et d'établir des objectifs annuels quantifiés qui seront élevés, en vue de réduire les rejets américains de gaz à effet de serre de 80% d'ici à 2050. "

Source : Aurélie Vieillefosse, Le changement climatique, Etudes de La Documentation française, n° 5290-5291, 2009 / 184 p.

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relations internationales - 	environnement

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La position américaine sur le climat - Le changement climatique - Dossiers - La Documentation française

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La position américaine sur le climat - Prenant acte de la réalité du réchauffement climatique dans la décennie 90, et de la responsabilité humaine dans ces déréglements, les dirigeants politiques ont initié une politique de lutte contre le réchauffement de la planète.

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USA raté de sauver la planete entre 1979 et 89

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USA raté de sauver la planete entre 1979 et 89

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https://www.letemps.ch/sciences/avons-perdu-combat-contre-changement-climatique
article de base :  https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/08/01/magazine/climate-change-losing-earth.html

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https://www.20minutes.fr/planete/2041139-20170331-etats-unis-o-vient-climato-scepticisme-donald-trump

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" Jobs, jobs, jobs ". C'est une formule qu'aime à répéter Donald Trump. Peut-être tout autant que son slogan de campagne : " Nous allons rendre sa grandeur aux Etats-Unis ". Lundi soir encore, pour se féliciter de l'investissement de Ford dans trois usines du Michigan, le président des Etats-Unis concluait son tweet de son " jobs, jobs, jobs ".

Big announcement by Ford today. Major investment to be made in three Michigan plants. Car companies coming back to U.S. JOBS! JOBS! JOBS!
- Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 28, 2017

Le lendemain, Donald Trump affirmait sa volonté de relancer l'industrie du charbon aux Etats-Unis* en signant le décret " sur l'indépendance énergétique ". Ce décret remet en cause le " Clean Power Plan ", une mesure pro-environnementale phare de Barack Obama qui imposait aux centrales thermiques des réductions de leurs émissions de CO2, et lève l'interdiction de nouvelles exploitations de charbon sur les terres fédérales.

" Honorer une promesse de campagne populiste "

D'où vient alors cette aversion de Donald Trump pour l'environnement ? " Dans ce jobs, jobs, jobs ", répond Jean-Eric Branaa, maître de conférences à l'université Paris II Assas et spécialiste de la politique aux Etats-Unis. " Donald Trump voit dans la lutte contre le réchauffement climatique un frein à l'expansion industrielle, explique-t-il. Le cœur de son programme économique est d'enlever toutes les régulations qui pèsent sur l'entreprise, en particulier dans le domaine de l'énergie. "
>> Lire aussi: Décret de Trump sur le charbon: Quelles conséquences sur les engagements pris à la COP 21?
Entre emploi et préservation de l'environnement, Trump choisirait alors sans hésiter la première option. Marie-Cécile Naves, docteur en science politique de l'université Paris-Dauphine et auteur de Trump, l'onde de choc populiste y voit " la volonté d'honorer une promesse de campagne extrêmement populiste. Elle rassure un électorat qui l'a porté au pouvoir ou à des lobbies dont il a besoin ". " Regardez qui entoure Donald Trump lors de la signature du décret, poursuit-elle. Des mineurs. Que des hommes, tous blancs. "

A NEW ERA IN AMERICAN ENERGY! #MadeInTheUSA🇺🇸
Watch here: https://t.co/EG02Fdlkba pic.twitter.com/XT12jqoIqj
- Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 28, 2017

Une défiance à l'égard des sciences ?

Pragmatique, ce climato-scepticisme s'appuie aussi sur un fond idéologique. " Donald Trump est issu de la branche la plus conservatrice du parti Républicain ", rappelle Jean-Eric Branaa. On trouve ainsi dans l'entourage proche de Donald Trump Myron Ebell, directeur d'un think tank libertarien, et Scott Pruitt, actuel directeur de l'Agence de protection de l'environnement (EPA), l'équivalent de notre ministre de l'environnement. Tous deux se sont fait connaître pour leurs opinions contestataires sur le changement climatique. " Leur position consiste à dire que le réchauffement climatique est un leurre, que nous avons autant de preuves que c'est vrai que de preuves que c'est faux, reprend Jean-Eric Branaa. Partant de ce principe, tout ce qui peut être un frein à la prospérité économique, comme le principe de précaution, est vécu comme une entrave insupportable ".
>> Lire aussi: L'environement, premier sacrifice de Donald Trump dans son nouveau budget
Mauvais calcul ?

En résulte une politique à court terme, " parfois à l'encontre des intérêts même de Donald Trump ", note Denis Voisin, porte-parole de la Fondation Nicolas Hulot. Sa décision de relancer l'industrie du charbon est un exemple. " Il mise sur une énergie du passé, décriée par une part croissante de la population, alors que le secteur de l'énergie renouvelable est en plein boom et qu'il crée bien plus d'emplois aujourd'hui que l'industrie du charbon ".

La remise en cause du Clean Power Plan, mardi, ne serait vraisemblablement qu'une étape dans la politique climatosceptique de Donald Trump. " Elle a été précédée de décisions allant dans le même sens, rappelle Denis Bonvoisin. Il a pris un décret permettant le rejet des déchets de mine dans les rivières, il a réduit fortement les budgets dédiés à l'EPA et supprimé une vingtaine de programmes autour de la recherche climatique. "

Les Accords de Paris ensuite ?

La suite ? Forcément, les inquiétudes se portent sur les Accords de Paris pour le climat signés fin 2015 par 190 pays dont les Etats-Unis, et qui vise à contenir le réchauffement climatique en dessous de 2°C par rapport aux niveaux préindustriels. Mercredi soir encore, Sean Spicer, porte-parole de la Maison-Blanche, déclarait qu'" aucune décision n'avait été prise " par l'administration Trump sur cet accord, une façon déjà de le remettre en cause.

Sortir de cet accord ne sera toutefois pas chose aisée. Donald Trump s'exposerait à une forte opposition parfois même inattendue. " La compagnie pétrolière Exxon Mobile a fait savoir qu'elle était favorable aux Accords de Paris ", rappelle Marie-Cécile Naves.

La Californie est d'ores et déjà montée au créneau après la remise en cause du Clean Power Plan, son gouverneur dénonçant " un cadeau inconscient aux pollueurs ". Denis Bonvoisin y voit une source d'espoir. " Les Etats-Unis restent un pays fédéral où les Etats et les villes ont beaucoup de pouvoirs, y compris dans le domaine environnemental ", rappelle-t-il. Le scepticisme des Etats-Unis doit aussi pousser l'Union Européenne à prendre le leadership de la transition énergétique. Encore une fois, il y a des emplois à la clé. "
*L'industrie minière aux Etats-Unis est passée de 88.000 emplois en 2008 à 66.000 fin 2015.

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Etats-Unis: Mais d'où vient le climato-scepticisme de Donald Trump?

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" Jobs, jobs, jobs ". C'est une formule qu'aime à répéter Donald Trump. Peut-être tout autant que son slogan de campagne : " Nous allons rendre sa grandeur aux Etats-Unis ". Lundi soir encore, pour se féliciter de l'investissement de Ford dans trois usines du Michigan, le président des Etats-Unis concluait son tweet de son " jobs, jobs, jobs ".