President Should Listen to CEOs on CO2 Limits

What the anti-environment Bush administration and the Republican Party have failed to do for six years, a coalition of American corporations and executives, including New Mexico’s PNM Resources, now hopes to accomplish.

Their goal, announced Monday: Get the federal government to set carbon dioxide emission limits to begin addressing the grave global climate consequences of heating up the Earth’s atmosphere. They called on Congress and the White House “to quickly enact strong national legislation to achieve significant reductions of greenhouse gas emissions.”

PNM and its CEO and president, Jeff Sterba, deserve praise for being among 10 major U.S. corporations taking the high road on this crucial global environmental issue. The challenge for them is to get a majority of America’s power companies also to buy in.

As Sterba well knows, New Mexico’s two U.S. senators — Jeff Bingaman, a Silver City Democrat, and Pete Domenici, an Albuquerque Republican — should play a leading role in getting global warming to the top of the nation’s agenda. Both serve on the Senate Energy Committee and should push hard for mandatory emission controls advocated by these corporate executives and environmental groups.

While the Oval Office, Congress, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers continue to have their collective heads stuck in the sand, Monday’s call for drastic action came from PNM, but also from heavy corporate hitters like General Electric, DuPont, Aloca, Duke Energy and Caterpillar.

Monday may well be marked as a historic turning point in the debate — which has gone on way too long and focused wrongly on the “need for more definitive science” — over whether the United States should act to reduce its carbon-emission burden in the Earth’s atmosphere.

PNM, part of the U.S. Climate Change Partnership of companies and environmental groups that called for immediate action, can justifiably claim now to be part of the solution.

Sterba’s comments were bold and insightful, focusing hopeful concern for those we have been victimizing by our inaction.

“The unique challenge of climate change is that it requires action now on a problem that will affect our grandchildren more than it will affect us,” he said. “With the right framework to address this problem and even create unique opportunities within our society, I believe the USGAP approach is the right approach.”

Appropriately, these corporations join several American cities and states in demanding a comprehensive policy that is compatible with the hard science and the global call for action.

They stood shoulder to shoulder at the National Press Club with four major environmental groups — the Environmental Defense Fund, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Pew Center on Global Climate Change and the World Resources Institute. This sends a strong signal that the old ways of conflict between corporations and those seeking to protect the environment are waning. In reaching out to sound environmental groups, these CEOs are saying global warming is not just an environmental problem but an economic, social and strategic challenge to the entire world.

Even the Pentagon has recognized its implications for national security.

In a letter to Bush, the coalition called for a “coordinated, economywide, market-driven approach to climate protection” that would allow a national “cap and trade program” for CO2 emissions.

Several bills pending in Congress would employ this approach, including proposals by presidential hopefuls Sen. Barrack Obama, an Illinois Democrat, and Sen. John McCain, an Arizona Republican.

Domenici and Bingaman could be useful in forging a veto-proof bipartisan majority to enact caps on CO2 emissions and a national strategy for long-term reductions, as well as addressing the ramifications of global climate change on our cities, states and economies.

Bush, who is expected to address the issue in his State of the Union speech tonight by calling for voluntary measures, apparently still doesn’t get it. He should admit he was grossly mistaken on global warming and begin a dialogue with Congress on the need for a comprehensive national global warming strategy — beginning with mandatory CO2 emission controls.

(c) 2007 Albuquerque Journal. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.