Bush Admin Says Technology Climate Key, But Pinches Pennies While Shoveling Money Into Fossil Fuels

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WASHINGTON -- At the Group of 8 summit of world leaders in June, President Bush repeated his calls for developing nations to curb their emissions of greenhouse gases. Without their cooperation, he said, drastic measures in the United States to battle climate change would make little sense. "We all can make major strides, and yet there won't be a reduction until China and India are participants," he told reporters.

But just weeks earlier, the U.S. government had pledged to help finance one of the world's most advanced oil refineries, taking shape in Jamnagar, India. The facility, to be completed by December 2008, will not only produce petroleum products, it will annually emit nearly 9 million metric tons of carbon dioxide -- the major contributor to global warming -- into the atmosphere. That estimate comes from the U.S. Export-Import Bank, which announced $500 million in loan guarantees for the project in May. And those figures do not take into account the emissions from the vehicles that will burn the giant refinery's gasoline, the planes that will fly on its jet fuel or the stoves that use its propane and kerosene.

The Jamnagar refinery is one of hundreds of fossil-fuel projects built with the help of U.S.-controlled funding agencies. Since 1995, when the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change agreed there was a "discernible human influence" on global warming, the United States has helped finance power plants, liquefied natural gas processors, oil pipelines and the like in more than 40 countries -- in effect extending America's "carbon footprint" well past this nation's borders.

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From 1995 to 2006, the Ex-Im Bank and OPIC provided more than $21 billion in loans and loan guarantees for oil refineries, pipeline projects, liquefied natural gas plants and electric power plants around the world. A snapshot of the environmental impact can be seen in a sample of projects subsidized in Russia, Mexico, Venezuela, Algeria, China, Brazil, Turkey and India. Those 48 projects alone will be responsible for at least 12 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions over their lifetime, or at least 600 million metric tons annually, according to a Times analysis of data provided by Friends of the Earth. The organization used data from the lending agencies' records, and emissions were calculated by analyst Richard Heede of Climate Mitigation Services, a private Colorado firm. CO2 figures were not available for more than 150 additional projects in those eight countries.

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http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/front/la-na-emissions12aug12,1,4192368.story