-Caveat Lector- conservativeinfo - Subscribe to the Conservative Information email list at http://conservativeinfo.listbot.com The Right Kind of Green The pursuit of wealth is the best environmental policy. BY THOMAS J. BRAY Tuesday, May 8, 2001 Wall St Journal President Bush may painting himself back into a corner on carbon dioxide regulation. And he is getting lots of help from big corporations eager to demonstrate they are on the side of angels. With only two weeks to go before the administration unveils its energy policy, insiders say a proposal for a "voluntary" cap-and-trade system to limit CO2 emissions is under active consideration. Under such a system, participating companies would be able to trade emission rights for cash on the barrelhead. Some companies already have begun piling up credits, in part because they figure it's inevitable and in part to burnish their images. Last week Entergy Corp., the nation's third-largest electric utility, declared that it would voluntarily cap its own CO2 emissions at 50 million tons a year. Likewise, Ford Motor Co., whose chairman is the avowedly green William Clay Ford Jr., announced in its second annual "corporate citizenship report" that it is seeking ways to cut CO2 emissions unilaterally. "Ford's efforts to be a responsible corporate citizen," cooed the Sierra Club, "are in stark contrast with the Bush administration's irresponsible remarks trivializing energy efficiency and President Bush's broken promise on curbing global warming." Bush advisers have spent much of the last month listening to a chorus of experts, most of whom believe global warming is already reality, debating what to do. It might be tough for Mr. Bush to turn his back entirely on the Rio Treaty his father negotiated in 1992, which calls for government action. Besides, how could anyone object to a voluntary system of hedging against a United Nations prediction that temperatures will rise by as much as 10 degrees Fahrenheit over the next 100 years? Here's how. The White House is almost surely wrong if it thinks a voluntary program will win brownie points from its environmental critics. The voluntary strategy would be an admission that global warming is a serious threat, even though President Bush himself has acknowledged that the jury is still out. Sooner or later, voluntary controls are likely to be replaced by mandatory ones. Even greens who concede that the scientific evidence is sketchy, argue that the "precautionary principle" requires America, the biggest "polluter," to act now. By the time the theory is proved, they say, the world could be toast. But there is a risk to the government getting things wrong as well. In the 1970s, many of the same scientists were all agog about the risk of global cooling. What if we wind up spending huge sums to insure against the wrong thing--and make the actual problem worse? That wouldn't exactly be a first for Washington. Indeed, as some economists point out, the Kyoto accords would have cost America $100 billion to $400 billion in lost gross domestic product. Yet the computer models favored by climatologists indicate Kyoto would have done very little to actually reduce warming. Skeptics believe Kyoto was a bait-and-switch that would have been followed by far more costly controls. A sensible middle ground, some conservative environmentalists argue, would be a strategy aimed at improving mankind's resilience--its ability to adapt to emerging threats whatever they might be. If the data suggest global warming is indeed a problem, for example, then policies might be devised to discourage development in vulnerable, low-lying coastal areas. Or more attention might be given to agricultural strains that are better able to withstand drought. Rather than place draconian taxes on energy use--taxes that aren't likely to be accepted by the American public, judging from the response to high gasoline, fuel-oil and electricity prices--taxes and regulation should be reduced as a means of encouraging new technologies that might greatly reduce environmental impacts. The main object would be to create a wealthier world. Wealthy societies are far more resilient than poor societies. Such an approach also would have the virtue of being entirely in keeping with President Bush's conservative, supply-side views. Even more to the point, it would be in keeping with the optimistic streak in our American nature. Mr. Bray is a staff columnist at the Detroit News. 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