Dethroning King Coal

WITH PRESIDENT BUSH finally acknowledging climate change but still opposing mandatory limits on greenhouse gas emissions, environmentalists have to content themselves with limited victories in the effort to curb global warming. There were two such signs of progress recently. First, Al Gore's film on climate change won an Academy Award for best documentary. Second, the buyers of the biggest utility in Texas have agreed to reduce the number of new coal-fired generating plants to be built by TXU from 11 to three. The success of the film and the green buyout demonstrate that both the public and the business world are ahead of the Bush administration when it comes to taking the threat of a warming planet seriously.

The report last month by the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change left little doubt that humankind is remaking the planet's climate through emissions of carbon dioxide and other gases that form a heat-trapping layer in the atmosphere. Changing this course on a global basis will require the kind of leadership from the United States that has been sadly lacking.

But the election last November brought to power on Capitol Hill senators and representatives who are determined to tackle this problem. Two of them, Democratic Senators Barbara Boxer of California and Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico, have warned utility owners that coal-fired plants they are now hurrying to build will not be grandfathered under any legislation they pass that restricts carbon dioxide emissions. Coal yields more carbon dioxide than other hydrocarbons, but US utilities have plans on the drawing board to build 150 plants using this relatively cheap and abundant fuel.

Make that 142 after the negotiations between the TXU buyers and leaders of environmental organizations.

Whether the scaling back of TXU's coal plans will set an example for other utilities remains to be seen. Last week, a leadingclimate change scientist for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, James Hansen, said the nation should put a moratorium on all new coal-burning plants and plan to "bulldoze" by midcentury any such plants that do not include technology for capturing and burying their carbon dioxide emissions.

The TXU deal would not pass muster with Hansen, but the agreement does include a commitment by the utility to reduce its carbon dioxide emissions to 1990 levels by 2020, support a $400 million efficiency program, and back mandatory national caps on greenhouse gas emissions. That puts TXU in the same camp as major corporations like GE and Du Pont, and leading presidential contenders in both parties. Thanks to the likes of Al Gore and James Hansen, the public and the corporate boardroom are preparing for the kind of climate change action that the Bush administration still shrinks from.