University of Colorado Law School Colorado Law Scholarly Commons Getches-Wilkinson Center for Natural Books, Reports, and Studies Resources, Energy, and the Environment 1990 Global Warming: National and International Policy Directions Martha M. Ezzard University of Colorado Boulder. Natural Resources Law Center Follow this and additional works at: https://scholar.law.colorado.edu/books_reports_studies Part of the Energy Policy Commons, and the Environmental Policy Commons Citation Information Martha M. Ezzard, Global Warming: National and International Policy Directions (Natural Res. Law Ctr., Univ. of Colo. Sch. of Law 1990). MARTHA M. EZZARD, GLOBAL WARMING: NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL POLICY DIRECTIONS (Natural Res. Law Ctr., Univ. of Colo. Sch. of Law 1990). Reproduced with permission of the Getches-Wilkinson Center for Natural Resources, Energy, and the Environment (formerly the Natural Resources Law Center) at the University of Colorado Law School. GLOBAL WARMING: NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL POLICY DIRECTIONS Martha M. Ezzard Berryhill, Cage & North Denver, Colorado and Research Fellow Natural Resources Law Center University of Colorado School of Law 1990 NRLC Occasional Paper Series Natural Resources Law Center GLOBAL WARMING: NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL POLICY DIRECTIONS By Martha M. Ezzard^ The East is looking to the West today, to market economies to solve problems. But unless (wg) deduct environmental costs from energy production revenues, the free market will have absentees - future generations, the rest of creation. Jose Lutzenberger Secretary of the Environment, Brazil 1990 Interparliamentary Conference on the Global Environment, Washington, D.C. A Threat of New Dimensions Global warming, especially the threat to solve environmental as well as economic of rapid climate change, poses an problems. environmental challenge of new dimensions. It is a global threat that hovers over the With the question of America's planet in war and peace, arising in the fires environmental leadership in mind, two tasks of the Persian Gulf oil terror as surely as in were undertaken in order to examine the ongoing debate about the need for national policy directions. First, personal sustainable development to curtail further interviews were conducted with seven reliance on fossil fuels. It is a challenge environmental leaders in Congress. Second, which stretches the limits of all of the an analysis was made of the relationship, if disciplines involved in defining the nature of any, between democratic institutions and the it and in posing solutions from mitigating its environmental ethic. The result of those potentially devasting effects: science, two inquiries is a specific and pragmatic economics, law and public policy. No one proposal for amending the U.S. Senate and nation and no one discipline will solve the House Rules to require an environmental global wanning problem alone. fiscal note on legislation which contains positive or negative environmental savings There are two reasons why America or costs. In an era in which budget drives has a special responsibility to take the lead policy and short term results are primary, on the global warming issue: Americans procedures which require accountability for consume more fossil fuel per capita than the expenditure of public resources, any other country in the world. And in the including long-term environmental costs, post Cold War world, more nations and must become a regular component of peoples than ever before are looking to the democratic policy making. free market, especially the American model, 1 Martha M. Ezzard, an attorney with Berryhill, Cage & North in Denver, was a Research Fellow at the Natural Resources Law Center spring semester 1990. She is a former Colorado State Senator and Representative. In examining international policy respiration or the thawing of Arctic directions, a study was undertaken of the permafrost, that could cause more rapid development of international legal principles warming. These and other uncertainties pertaining to the atmosphere — from the serve to confuse both the media and the 1941 Trail Smelter arbitration to the 1987 policymakers as to the need for preventive Montreal Protocol. International policy action now. directions point to proposal of a global warming framework convention at the 1992 Adding to the perceived scientific United Nations Conference on the Human uncertainty is the George C. Marshall Environment to be held in Brazil. Will the Institute Report issued in 1989. The United States play a lead role in creation of controversial report claimed that increased such a convention? Will the current solar activity rather than greenhouse gases Administration continue to oppose a carbon caused the earth's previous warming. dioxide (CO2) Protocol? These are key Although widely discredited by atmospheric questions in 1991. scientists and criticized for its lack of peer review, the report caught the attention of The Science of Global Warming key white House advisers and conservative leaders in Congress. Scientists attribute global warming primarily to the unprecedented build-up of While warming is currently predicted greenhouse or heat-trapping gases in the only on the basis of circumstantial evidence, earth's atmosphere. The earth's average according to National Center for temperature increased .5 degrees Celsius Atmospheric Research (NCAR) scientist, (C.) during the last century. Most of the Dr. Stephen Schneider, the GCMs should policy debate focuses on stabilizing or be able to produce valid evidence of global reducing the increasing rate at which CO2 wanning in the next ten years. As Dr. John — the chief culprit among the greenhouse Firor, head of NCAR's Advanced Studies gases - is being emitted into the earth's Program, points out, it is not global atmosphere as a result of the burning of wanning which is in doubt, but the exact fossil fuels. rate of warming which can't be ascertained today. There are five recognized climate change models, known as General Scientists have traditionally felt they Circulation Models (GCMs). They should stay out of the political fray for fear generally agree that a doubling of CO2 will of tarnishing their reputations as objective cause the earth's average temperature to seekers of truth. But the policymakers increase from 1.5 to 5 degrees C. in the interviewed for this study said sound policy next 50 years. None of the models is able on such a complex scientific issue as global to predict regional impacts very well wanning cannot be accomplished without because of their lack of spatial detail. But more involvement from the scientific the major weakness of the GCMs is their community. Following the heated public inability to consider the effects of clouds. debate over the Marshall Report, one of Clouds are a negative feedback in the the suggestions made by Colorado Senator warming process because they reflect Tim Wirth was for the creation of a panel sunlight back into space, decreasing the of scientific experts chosen by the National amount of heating. There are also positive Academy of Sciences (the one source to feedbacks, such as an increase in forest which legislators attributed the greatest credibility) as an ongoing resource for Congress in considering the global warming There are strong arguments and challenge. economic data on the other side, however, which indicate that an aggressive U.S. The Economics of Global Warming energy policy could not only counter global warming, but also result in greater domestic While leading scientists differ in productivity. their forecasts of the rate of global warming, few dispute the immediate need to Amory Lovins, who heads the Rocky respond to the global warming threat. By Mountain Institute in Snowmass, has argued contrast, several leading economists suggest since the mid-seventies for a U.S. energy that immediate action would not be cost policy based on energy efficiency. Lovins, efficient. Using various economic models, disputing Norhaus' conclusions at the same some economists claim adaptation rather scientific meeting last year, advocated his than prevention is the more economically belief that the technology exists to reduce prudent choice. by one-fourth the electrical demand for lighting, motors, and appliances. The Yale University Economics Professor problem, he noted, is that no national policy William Nordhaus, formerly a member of or agency exists to review or enforce the President Jimmy Carter's Council of redesign of electrical products. Economic Advisers, wrote in a recent article in The Economist. "For the bulk of the The American Council for an (U.S.) economy...climate change over the Energy-Efficient Economy, an economic next few decades is likely to have less effect think-tank, published a study in 1988 that than the reunification of Germany." also concludes that aggressive Nordhaus argues there are currently no energy-efficient policies can contain energy viable substitutes for fossil fuels, and, use at a constant level and still allow therefore, climate engineering or adaption economic growth. The authors, Chandler, would be less economically drastic. Geller and Ledbetter, point out that Speaking on the subject to the American reasonable reduction in energy intensity - Association for the Advancement of Science the rate of energy used per dollar of last February, he said, "The long-run economic output -- would make the U.S. marginal cost of reducing (greenhouse) economy more competitive with the emissions is estimated to be about $38 per