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A Guide to Information on Greenhouse Gases and Ozone Depletion
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FROM VOLUME 11, NUMBER 12, DECEMBER 1998

NEWS...
Legislation for Early Action

Item #d98dec43

On Dec. 28, the Los Angeles Times ran an editorial that pointed out that Sen. Connie Mack (R-FL), long a global- warming skeptic, has cosponsored a bill by Sen. John Chafee (R-R.I.) for reducing greenhouse-gas emissions. The bill would assure companies that, if they start reducing emissions early, they will not be penalized later with demands for more reductions. The bill would authorize binding agreements with U.S. companies to give them credit in any future emission-reduction programs. The editorial notes that “opponents [of the Kyoto Protocol] thought they were speaking for U.S. businesses which feared that the expense of investing in energy-efficiency technologies would undermine their international competitiveness, but in recent months more than dozen Fortune 500 companies have declared that energy-saving technologies are actually an economic boon, not an albatross.” A contradictory view was voiced in a long opinion-editorial by Jack Kemp and Fred Smith in the Jan. 13 New York Times. That piece criticized the proposed “early action” bill as a “milder version of the Kyoto treaty [that] would create a vast array of bureaucrats, at home and abroad, who would employ vague standards, arbitrary conditions, and dubious science to allocate economic rights and privileges.”