Sustainability and policy - Climate Change: Biological and Human Aspects - page 482

50% and electricity by 45%. Yet it noted that both domestic oil and gas production
were failing to grow to meet increases in demand. Conversely it observed that in
terms of its economy's energy intensity - energy consumed per US$ of GDP - it was
becoming more effective, in that since 1980 it was getting more dollars per unit of
energy consumed. Above all, it called for increased energy production by not just
renewable energy and nuclear power, but all fossil fuels including natural gas. This
last was particularly interesting in terms of energy sustainability because estimates
for the ratio of US reserves to (economic) production for gas were then of the order of
just a decade. However, the Policy Development Group anticipated this criticism by
calling for a vigorous domestic fossil energy exploration programme, part of which
would be in an opened part of Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. It also called
for the USA to build strong relationships with its overseas energy providers, namely
the Middle East. In short, it assumed that the nation's fossil carbon demand needed
to increase along with increases in alternative energy so as to meet continued growth
in energy consumption. In 2005 the essence of the report was enshrined in an Energy
Bill, for a brief summary of which see Kintisch (2005).
In light of the above, it was not surprising that George W. Bush's administration
also refused to sign the Kyoto Protocol. This meant that as a nation it continued not
to have any targets for cutting fossil carbon use. 'As a nation' because some US city
mayors and state governors have introduced local targets. In 2005 nine north-eastern
US states - Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New
Jersey, New York, Rhode Island and Vermont - planned to cap some 600 of their
power stations' carbon dioxide emissions at roughly 150 million t (about that year's
level), starting in 2009. Further, between 2015 and 2020 those states plan to reduce
power station emissions by 10%. The grouping represents about 3% of global fossil
energy emissions, although some states have pulled out and rejoined, and at the end
of 2011 New Jersey pulled out. In addition, two eastern Canadian states (Quebec and
New Brunswick) have observer status in the initiative. The proposal came after 2
years from the Regional Greenhouse-gas Initiative. Alongside this there is the New
England Governors/Eastern Canadian Premiers Climate Change Action Plan, which
calls for a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions to 10% below 1990 levels by 2020.
(This compares with the EU aim to reduce emissions to 20% below 1990 levels by
2020.)
Also in 2009, California (which as a state represents 12.19% of the US population
and 13.26% of its GDP) pledged to reach 1990 levels of emissions by 2020. Although
these US regional policy goals were welcome, and contrast sharply with US national
policy of George W. Bush (less so with Barack Obama), they are only policy goals.
As we shall see, and has been noted in the earlier subsection on the Kyoto Protocol
(section 8.1.8), policy goals are one thing, but realising them quite another. Notwith-
standing this, even if these states, or any country for that matter, did manage to lower
their carbon emissions, care is needed to ensure that there has been no carbon leakage.
Carbon leakage takes place when an area supposedly has reduced its emissions but
in fact has ceased high-carbon-emitting activities and imported goods and/or energy
the production of which elsewhere involved high-carbon emissions. (This is not to
be confused with carbon leakage from soils, to which some IPCC reports refer.) In