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U.S. agrees to pitch in against greenhouse gas
By wire services
Published November 17, 2004
WASHINGTON - Seeking to bolster its credentials on global warming, the United States signed an agreement Tuesday with 13 other nations that calls for investing up to $53-million in companies to profitably control emissions of methane, a greenhouse gas.
Emissions of methane, which mostly come from landfills, are ranked second behind carbon dioxide emissions among industrial gases scientists blame for warming the Earth's climate.
The administration's global plan pledges to spend the money over the next five years to encourage companies to provide participating countries with technologies that can trap the gas and make it available as an energy source to power utilities and private homes.
On Capitol Hill, however, debate continued Tuesday over the administration's resistance to mandatory limits on carbon dioxide emissions.
Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., called on President Bush to do more to fight global warming.
James Connaughton, chairman of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, predicted that by 2015 the effect of reducing methane emissions would be equivalent to taking 33-million cars off the road.
China, India, Japan, Mexico and Russia are among the countries participating.
The administration has acknowledged that Bush's climate plan, unveiled in 2002, will not reduce the amount of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases going into the atmosphere. Instead, it calls on industry to voluntarily reduce the amount released.
Bush in 2001 abandoned a campaign pledge to restrict carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels, then rejected the the Kyoto Protocol's mandatory controls on carbon dioxide and other gases that many scientists blame for warming the atmosphere.
[Last modified November 17, 2004, 00:03:19]
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