Seven Questions: Christine Todd Whitman on Global Warming

PAUL J. RICHARDS/AFP/Getty Images Frustration: Christine Todd Whitman and President George W. Bush never quite saw eye to eye on climate change policy.

FOREIGN POLICY: What have you been doing since resigning from the Bush administration in June 2003?

Christine Todd Whitman: I have a management consulting firm that works primarily with businesses to improve their environmental profiles and help them see ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and energy use. I have a political action committee that goes along with the book I wrote, Its My Party Too, to try to get political discourse, particularly in the Republican Party, back to the center. Im with the speakers bureau, and Im on some boards.

FP: How would you evaluate this administrations treatment of climate change?

CW: Sporadic and, at times, very frustrating. Waiting for definitive science is always a hazardous thing to do, because it can take a long time, and you can always find scientists who disagree. But even when President Bush said early in his first term that the Kyoto Protocol was a non-startersomething that should have come as a surprise to absolutely no onehe also recognized that something was happening, so he started spending more money on the issue.

When I left the agency, we were spending more money on climate change research and technology development than the rest of the developed world combined. By that time, the president had already called for an 18 percent reduction in greenhouse gas intensity by 2012. Steps were being taken to address climate change, and yet the administration wouldnt talk about them because, from a political perspective, the issue was not seen as a winner. In fact, it was seen as a loser, because the Republican base, as they were defining it at that point in time, (a) didnt have much interest in the environment, (b) thought Kyoto was just a way for the rest of the world to undermine the United States economy, and (c) hates regulation.

FP: Is there any merit to Representative Henry Waxmans accusation that the administration tried to mislead the public by injecting doubt into the science of global warming?

CW: You cant honestly say that the administration tried to mislead the public. There have been scientists who supported the administrations position on climate change. Look at Michael Crichtons book [State of Fear, New York: HarperCollins, 2004]he cites a lot of scientists there.

When I was administrator of the EPA, and we were putting together the report card on the environment, and it came to the issue of climate change, the Council on Environmental Quality was very willing to listen to scientists both within and outside the White House who had doubts [about human-induced climate change] and could not reach compromise. As a result, I refused to put compromised language in the report, and just described climate change as an important issue and referred people to the most recent studies on it at the time. Clearly, there was an economic concern that drove the administrations focus. But that happens with every administration. You have a bias and youre going to try to promote itthat doesnt mean youre trying to mislead the public.

FP: Were you surprised when President Bush cited climate change as a major global challenge in his State of the Union address?

CW: I was delighted. The time had come. You know, he has recognized this issue, he really has, but other policy considerations have kept usand this president in particularfrom being more outspoken on the issue, to his detriment here at home and internationally. Its caused unnecessary damage.

FP: How do you rate the role played by the following in the administrations rhetorical shift on climate change: The Stern Report, the upcoming fourth report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and Al Gores movie?

CW: The shift resulted from a combination of factors, and it certainly wasnt An Inconvenient Truth in and of itself. First, science has coalesced on the issue: Its pretty hard to find credible scientists who deny that climate change is happeningweve gotten over thatits clearly occurring. Its also getting harder and harder to find credible scientists who will say that man has nothing to do with it. The science is becoming much more certain.

Next, you have 29 states that are working to regulate emissions. The business community is now saying, We need to have some certainty here, and that an emissions cap will work. You have the evangelical community saying that this is an important issue, and that the government has an important role to play. From the administrations perspective, those are the most important factors.

FP: Will the upcoming release of the fourth IPCC report significantly affect the debate in Washington?

CW: I think so, particularly if the report is going to emphasize human causes as strongly as is being indicated. The report will be such a universal ratification of where the science is today that it will, to a large degree, shut down the naysayers. The most important and the most controversial IPCC report, though, will be the next one after this, because it will tell us how to address climate change.

FP: If the successor agreement to the Kyoto Protocol includes China and India, which produce a lot of greenhouse emissions, can you envision the United States finally getting on board?

CW: Something is going to happen. We now have bilateral or multilateral agreements with almost all of the developed world. I certainly see the United States reaching an international accord on carbon emissions because were already doing it piecemeal. But right now the K-word has taken on a life of its own. I used to say to my counterpart in Japan, Cant we have a Tokyo protocol? Anything other than Kyoto! I was at a panel two years ago in Paris with someone from the United Nations Environment Programme who was negotiating the next round of budgets for Kyoto; he told me that the United States, through voluntary means, was actually on the way to meeting many of Kyotos requirements.

Christine Todd Whitman, a former governor of New Jersey, served as administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency from January 2001 to June 2003.