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  • 6/20/2025
How bi-partisan political and economic forces prevented the U.S. government from confronting what may be one of the most serious problems facing humanity today — climate change — and how state & local governments and the private sector are filling the leadership void on the topic.

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00:00The
00:22argument about climate change is over. Now it's time to act.
00:27As the 2008 presidential campaign begins, a new bipartisan consensus has emerged on global warming.
00:34This is a problem whose time has come.
00:37But for nearly 20 years, through Republican and Democratic administrations alike,
00:42the federal government failed to take decisive action.
00:45Do you plan to go to Rio?
00:47We're contemplating that right now.
00:49The first President Bush signed the International Climate Treaty in Rio.
00:54It was, however, not binding because the Bush administration insisted that the targets be voluntary.
01:02Vice President Al Gore committed the U.S. to the Kyoto Protocol.
01:06The United States remains firmly committed to a strong binding target.
01:11But the Clinton administration didn't bring it to the Senate for ratification.
01:15I thought it was a little disingenuous to go sign the treaty and never even fight for it.
01:22And President George W. Bush withdrew the U.S. from the Kyoto Treaty process altogether.
01:28The Kyoto Protocol was fatally flawed in fundamental ways.
01:34The way it happened was the equivalent to flipping the bird, frankly, to the rest of the world.
01:41Why do you think we've had three administrations who have not been able to deal with this issue on the federal level?
01:48Tonight on Frontline, correspondent Deborah Amos investigates the politics behind the U.S. government's failure to act on the biggest environmental problem of our time.
01:59It's still hot and it's still dry in the nation's drought-stricken farm belt.
02:24Is this summer's terrible heat just temporary, freakish weather?
02:31Or is there a change in the atmosphere caused by our pollution?
02:37Climate change became a national issue for Americans in 1988.
02:43They could feel it.
02:47The temperatures climbed all spring, with an unusual number of floods and forest fires.
02:53It's said that this drought has the potential to be a nationwide disaster.
02:58If you get 50 miles south here, we'll get to the same situation.
03:02Farmers lost crops in the withering heat.
03:081988 was the hottest year on record all over the planet.
03:12Even the Amazon was on fire.
03:14A growing number of scientists saw convincing evidence that carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases were warming the Earth's atmosphere.
03:26Dr. James Hansen, a top climatologist at NASA, decided it was time to speak out.
03:35I decided I was going to say it was time to stop waffling so much and say that the evidence is pretty strong that the greenhouse effect is here and is affecting our climate.
03:45We knew there was this scientist at NASA, you know, who had really identified the human impact before anybody else had done so and was very certain about it.
03:57So we called him up and asked him if he would testify.
04:00On Capitol Hill, Senator Timothy Wirth was one of the few politicians already concerned about global warming.
04:07And he was not above using a little stagecraft for Hansen's testimony.
04:12We called the Weather Bureau and found out what historically was the hottest day of the summer, whether it was June 6th or June 9th or whatever it was.
04:20So we scheduled the hearing that day, and bingo, it was the hottest day on record in Washington or close to it.
04:27Did you also alter the temperature in the hearing room that day?
04:31What we did was went in the night before and opened all the windows, I will admit, right, so that the air conditioning wasn't working inside the room.
04:38And so when the hearing occurred, there was not only bliss, which is television cameras and double figures, but it was really hot.
04:48Dr. Hansen, if you'd start us off, we'd appreciate it.
04:51The wonderful Jim Hansen, who was wiping his brow at the table, at the hearing, at the witness table, and giving this remarkable testimony.
05:00Number one, the Earth is warmer in 1988 than at any time in the history of instrumental measurements.
05:09Number two, the global warming is now large enough that we can ascribe, with a high degree of confidence, a cause and effect relationship to the greenhouse effect.
05:20If he hadn't said what he had said, it would not have become the major issue, and scientists would not have taken it up the way they did after that.
05:29It was a major breakthrough. Certainly it was a major political breakthrough.
05:36I said that I was 99% confident that the world really was getting warmer, and that there was a high degree of probability that it was due to human-made greenhouse gases.
05:50And I think it was a 99% probability statement which got a lot of attention.
05:57I mean, this was a very, very brave statement. I mean, he was on the edge of the science.
06:02He's working for the federal government, and certainly this was not cleared, you know, far up the line what he had to say.
06:09So the summary of what Jim Hansen had to say that year, plus the fact that it had gotten so much attention,
06:16that I thought we were going to move a lot more rapidly than we did.
06:20As it turned out, the country had more immediate concerns.
06:27In 1991, the first President Bush launched the first Gulf War.
06:40Then, global warming seemed to stop, briefly.
06:44Well, in 1991, Mount Pinatubo Blue in the Philippines sent a huge cloud of sulfate particles high into the stratosphere and cooled the world's climate,
06:54which is kind of a drag if you're trying to build impetus toward cutting emissions of heat-trapping gases.
07:01The climate became an issue again in the 1992 presidential campaign.
07:08We stopped building nuclear power plants, but our addiction to fossil fuels still is wrapping the earth in a deadly shroud of greenhouse gases.
07:20Candidate Bill Clinton challenged President Bush to attend the upcoming Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro
07:27and commit the United States to a global warming treaty.
07:32Mr. President, you plan to go to Rio for the Earth Summit?
07:35We're contemplating that right now as to what to do, and there's some preliminary work going on.
07:40You want to go?
07:41And, uh, well, I...
07:45And it became a major issue, was he or was he not going to go to the Earth Summit?
07:49And, uh, at that point, uh, you know, we on the Democratic side were beating up on them as hard as possible,
07:56saying, what do you mean the president's not going to go to the Earth Summit?
07:58It's the most important gathering in the history of the world.
08:02Was he getting it equally strong from the other side?
08:05Don't you dare go to Rio?
08:07Oh, of course he was.
08:08And, uh, within the administration, we were divided.
08:10The, uh, number of people were concerned that he not go,
08:13thought that it was going to be an environmental jamboree,
08:15and that, uh, we would be the punching bag down there.
08:19William Riley wanted strong action on climate change
08:24and negotiated a secret deal to smooth the way.
08:29I had previously worked out an understanding with the president of Brazil
08:32that, uh, before I advocated his coming,
08:35the president guaranteed to me that they would do everything not to embarrass him there.
08:40There was a strong debate about whether he should go,
08:42and I think, honestly, the president went because he thought it was
08:45where the president of the United States is concerned about these issues ought to be.
08:48In the United States, we have the world's tightest air quality standards on...
08:53President Bush did join the largest gathering of world leaders in history.
09:00He signed the landmark treaty on climate change.
09:04But his signature came with a catch.
09:08There was a commitment by the United States as a ratified party to that treaty
09:13to return its emissions by the year 2000 to the level they had been in 1990,
09:19which, frankly, would have been a fairly easy thing to do
09:22if we had started in 1992 when we ratified it.
09:26It was, however, not binding because the Bush administration,
09:31the first Bush administration, insisted that the targets be voluntary.
09:36Did you agree with voluntary rather than mandatory provisions?
09:42No, I recommended that the president commit to a mandatory program
09:48of trying to control carbon dioxide emissions going forward.
09:52I was a lonely proponent of that position at that time,
09:55and I think the economic advisers simply were much more concerned about the cost.
10:00The president made it clear the U.S. economy, not the environment, was his priority.
10:07I must as president and will as a human being keep in mind the needs of American families to have jobs.
10:17That message would resonate powerfully back home.
10:20We are 550 coal miners!
10:23Where it resonated was with very specific special interests, coal companies and their associated unions.
10:33The companies could move the Republicans, the unions could move the Democrats.
10:36Same was true in the auto unions and the auto industry as well.
10:40These companies give Republicans large campaign contributions and Democrats depend on the unions very heavily in many of these states for their electoral support.
10:53In 1993, when Bill Clinton and Al Gore took over, there were high hopes for stronger action on climate change.
11:02Of course, when Glor became vice president, and with his interest in having published a book on this,
11:09everybody thought this was going to be a major preoccupation of the Clinton administration.
11:16The new administration had a plan to reduce greenhouse gases.
11:22The BTU tax, a tax on energy, was designed to cut energy use and also help reduce the federal deficit.
11:30A BTU tax on the heat content of energy.
11:37These measures will cost an American family with an income of about $40,000 a year, less than $17 a month.
11:47It will cost American families with incomes under $30,000 nothing.
11:52The Republican minority in Congress seized on Clinton's new tax.
11:57If you're on the left, the answer is always a tax.
12:00The answer is always bigger government.
12:01The answer is always more regulation.
12:03You were against it.
12:04I think it's nuts.
12:06If you didn't get the message, you better get a hearing aid, because it was pretty loud and clear.
12:11This was the one piece of the Clinton deficit reduction plan that Republicans could say hit middle-class families.
12:21And therefore, it was the most dangerous, the most politicized, and the most controversial.
12:28In the end, it was Clinton's own party that killed the BTU tax.
12:34Senate Democrats from Western states rich in oil and coal rejected the tax before it even came to a vote.
12:41I don't think it's going anywhere.
12:43They were undermined by people from their own party.
12:45Many Democrats represent farm states and coal-producing states.
12:50And that's where the Clinton administration had not done any spade work.
12:55It was like many of the things that the Clinton administration did in its first two years.
13:00They got the policy right, but they got the politics entirely wrong.
13:04Clinton later said that it was the biggest mistake of his presidency.
13:08So you start to ask yourself, what was it?
13:12I mean, did they not know how to do politics?
13:15Well, it's one of two things.
13:17Either they didn't really know how to do the politics,
13:21or they were not serious about really getting it done.
13:27There's something in these pictures you can't see.
13:30It's essential to life.
13:32And there was another factor in the national debate,
13:35a media campaign funded by the energy industry
13:39and designed to raise public doubts about global warming.
13:42It isn't smog or smoke.
13:44It's what we breathe out and plants breathe in.
13:48Carbon dioxide. They call it pollution. We call it life.
13:52There was a concerted campaign by lobbyists and communicators for industry
13:58and scientists who had partnerships or relationships
14:02with either libertarian think tanks or with industry directly
14:05to cast doubt, basically to focus everyone on the uncertainties.
14:11A coalition of coal companies produced a film that suggested
14:15more carbon dioxide might be a good thing.
14:19A doubling of the CO2 content of the atmosphere
14:22will produce a tremendous greening of planet Earth.
14:25A better world, a more productive world.
14:27For citrus, it would be a very, very positive thing.
14:30In terms of plant growth, it's nothing but beneficial.
14:34While these scientists touted carbon dioxide,
14:37a handful of others became industry-sponsored greenhouse skeptics.
14:41Once you tell enough people that the world is warming,
14:44people start to believe it.
14:46What would you attribute that Russia...
14:48They made themselves available to the media
14:50and claimed global warming was a myth.
14:53The most of a temperature rise we could get would be of the order of a half a degree,
14:57which doesn't strike me as a catastrophe.
15:00It turned out the energy industry also funded the research of some of these scientists.
15:05I found out that about three of these skeptics had received about a million dollars
15:10over a three-year period.
15:12And that was never publicly disclosed until we wrote about it.
15:16And the money came from?
15:18And the money basically came from coal interests,
15:21from mining interests, from some oil companies.
15:24The planet has not warmed up nearly as much as the computer forecasts
15:28that are used for the basis of this gloom and doom scenario suggest that they should have.
15:33And this is a playbook that was actually developed way back in the 80s,
15:38and it started with the tobacco industry.
15:41What the tobacco industry did was begin to question the science,
15:45simply say, well, we don't know the way that cigarette smoking causes cancer.
15:50So they began with the attack on the science.
15:53Same playbook on global warming.
15:55One of the most distinguished of the skeptics,
15:58Dr. Frederick Seitz, former president of the National Academy of Sciences,
16:03received research funds from both the tobacco and the oil industry.
16:07Did it matter to you where the money came from?
16:10As long as it was green, when money changes hand,
16:13it's the new owner that decides how it's used, not the old.
16:19What is your position today on global warming?
16:24I would say it's unlikely that we face serious danger from global warming.
16:32Unlikely?
16:33Yeah, unlikely.
16:34In the 1980s, you said global warming is far more a matter of politics than of climate.
16:41That's still true.
16:42Most scientists are Democrats.
16:45I think, what is it, 73%, 93%, and it got to be a political issue.
16:52I think it's as simple as that.
16:55The skeptic's position became a political strategy.
17:02In 1995, a Republican pollster outlined the approach in a confidential memo.
17:09Voters believe there is no consensus about global warming.
17:13His advice?
17:14You need to make the lack of scientific certainty a primary issue.
17:20Was that you?
17:21That is me, and that was written.
17:23This discussion of global warming and climate change is something I've been involved in since 1995.
17:29And those are your words, and they used your words as a strategy to undermine the credibility of scientists who, for the most part, there are very few scientists who say that global warming is not a real thing.
17:44It was a great memo.
17:45Look, you want me to say it?
17:47It was a great memo.
17:48It was great language.
17:49I know that those who dislike my position or who resent the memo, they will acknowledge that it is good language.
17:57An entire group of science skeptics grew up around that, who have, in some ways, moved the debate back to scientists aren't really sure, when in fact scientists are sure.
18:13Again, I'm not going to, my own beliefs have changed from when I was tasked with that project.
18:22While Frank Luntz says he now believes global warming is real, his strategy of doubt was embraced by some prominent Republican politicians.
18:34Wake up, America, with all the hysteria, all the fear, all the phony science.
18:39Could it be that man-made global warming is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people?
18:45I believe it is.
18:46There's no question that the skeptics' campaign had a major impact on Congress.
18:51And it allowed those who were ideologically opposed to moving senators like Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma to have something to wave in the air and say,
19:01there's no reason to run any sort of economic risk here, there's no reason to take any action because we don't have the science yet.
19:09By 1995, the science was more certain.
19:14An international panel of more than 2,000 scientists issued a new report.
19:20Their consensus, global warming, is due to greenhouse gases caused by human activity.
19:27The remaining question, how severe would the climate changes be?
19:31That same year, the climate talks that began in Rio would reconvene in Berlin.
19:40In Berlin, nations will meet to determine what more the international community can do in response to the dramatic scientific evidence that now exists.
19:50The Clinton administration had decided voluntary emission cuts would never be enough.
19:57Eileen Clausen was on the negotiating team in Berlin.
20:01The Clinton administration was very actively pursuing an international agreement that would move from a voluntary system to a mandatory system.
20:13But the Clinton team could not convince China and India to agree to mandatory cuts.
20:20Developing country leaders uniformly saw the effort to put a binding climate change regime on them as an effort by the United States,
20:33the most advanced, productive economy in the world, to now stunt their growth before they could even have a chance to catch up.
20:42And they were truly outraged by it.
20:46There was also outrage in Congress, now controlled by the Republicans.
20:51The fact that China and India aren't even included means that you give them a substantial economic advantage in taking jobs away from America by increasing manufacturing in China and India.
21:03We would have been raising the cost of doing business in the U.S.
21:07Once again, the economy, not the climate, was the major concern.
21:12And America's most powerful industries, the energy and automobile companies, were dead set against mandatory carbon cuts.
21:22I can remember sitting in a room where the language was finally agreed, and I was there with Tim Wirth, who was also with the State Department at the time.
21:32And he very pleasantly said, no, Eileen, just go and tell all the industry groups what we've just agreed, which, of course, I did.
21:41And when I described sort of the language of the Berlin mandate, there was just unbelievable sort of silence as I was sort of saying, well, and this is the language we've agreed to.
21:54But when you looked out on that sea of faces, what did you see?
21:58I could see the beginnings of the plan to make sure that there was no treaty negotiated.
22:06In Congress, there was little support for the agreements hammered out in Berlin, which would form the basis of the next round of negotiations in Kyoto.
22:17As Speaker of the House, I had a team in Kyoto who came back and were just appalled by the way the treaty was negotiated, by the role of the U.S. delegation, by the degree to which the Europeans rigged the entire treaty to be anti-American.
22:32In the Senate, the opposition was bipartisan.
22:36Democrat Robert Byrd from West Virginia's coal country and Nebraska Republican Chuck Hagel sponsored a non-binding resolution opposed to a treaty that did not include India and China.
22:52It is the developing nations that will be the biggest emitters of greenhouse gases during the next 25 years.
22:58When a nation like China says, I won't voluntarily step up with no mandates, nor will I agree to anything in the future.
23:06We'll see how our economy works.
23:08Well, that's asking the United States to take a tremendous leap out into the unknown.
23:14I don't think that was in the interest of our country.
23:16I don't think it was in the interest of the world.
23:18Virginia, the ayes are 95, and the nays are zero, and the resolution is approved.
23:25Why was Kyoto is not fair?
23:29Why was that such a powerful idea that couldn't be countered?
23:33Well, it could have been countered because, of course, you could say,
23:38you could say, look, we've been responsible for the problem up till now.
23:43They're going to be responsible for the future, but we have to act as a consequence of our past emissions
23:49before we can ask them to act in anticipation of their future emissions.
23:54That's not a hard argument to make.
23:56That's why I've always believed it was a red herring designed to avoid action,
24:02because it's obviously a phony argument.
24:06And the other phony argument that went with it was we can't act alone,
24:11because then all our industry will move overseas to where carbon emissions are not regulated.
24:16And, of course, most of our energy use can't move even if it wanted to.
24:21It's in our buildings. It's in our stores, in our homes, in our office buildings. It's in our automobiles.
24:28But the 95-0 Senate vote still hung over the Clinton administration as delegations gathered in Kyoto in December 1997.
24:42Vice President Gore decided to head the U.S. delegation despite the concerns of his political aides.
24:48Gore was obviously running for president, and you can imagine what all of the political handlers were saying.
24:54Don't touch this issue. Don't get involved in it. Don't do this. Don't do that.
24:58A lot of conservative part of the administration, I know, was arguing against him going to Kyoto.
25:04And it was a bit like the conservatives arguing against George Bush going to Rio.
25:10The human consequences and the economic costs of failing to act are unthinkable.
25:17Gore set out the administration position, a mandatory cap on carbon emissions.
25:23For our part, the United States remains firmly committed to a strong binding target
25:30that will reduce our own emissions by nearly 30 percent from what they would otherwise be,
25:35a commitment as strong or stronger than any we have heard here from any country.
25:42Although Gore had committed the U.S. to the climate treaty,
25:46in Washington, convinced they faced certain defeat,
25:50the Clinton administration decided not to bring the treaty to the Senate for ratification.
25:56I thought it was a little disingenuous to try to score political points
26:01and go sign the treaty and never bring it before the Senate or even fight for it or even push it on us.
26:09And how did you feel about that?
26:12Well, I mean, obviously, I felt strongly enough that I resigned from the administration,
26:18in part over this, because I thought it was dishonest to go and negotiate a treaty
26:24that you had no hope of getting ratified in the Senate.
26:29And because I also felt that it's better to have good rhetoric than bad rhetoric,
26:34but it's actually better still to want to do something.
26:38Former President Clinton and Vice President Gore declined to be interviewed for this program.
26:45During the late 1990s, America's booming economy sent more carbon into the atmosphere than ever before.
26:54So by the time Bill Clinton's administration was finished,
26:58we saw greenhouse gases so much higher than they were at the beginning of the decade
27:03that any president, not just George W. Bush, but any president, even an Al Gore presidency,
27:08would have found it very, very difficult to meet the Kyoto targets.
27:12That's the dirty little secret.
27:15In the 2000 campaign, Al Gore had the reputation as the strongest environmentalist ever to run for president.
27:23Now, I want to talk about the environment here today,
27:27because we have a situation where the big polluters are supporting Governor Bush,
27:34and they are wanting to be in control of the environmental policies.
27:39But candidate Gore rarely mentioned global warming or talked about mandatory carbon caps.
27:46The politics was so divisive.
27:49They wrapped all of the, any problems with Kyoto around Gore's neck.
27:54Ranked number one as the smoggiest state.
27:56The Republicans were going to try to beat him up on this very, very, you know,
28:00really as aggressively as they possibly could, whether it go, Ozone Al or whatever it was called.
28:05In Texas, we passed one of the toughest...
28:07Then, Texas Governor George W. Bush outflanked Gore on Gore's own turf.
28:13My opponent calls for voluntary reductions in such emissions.
28:17In Texas, I think we've done it better with mandatory reductions.
28:21And I believe the nation can do better as well.
28:24Bush surprised many by backing mandatory cuts in greenhouse gas emissions.
28:30With the help of Congress, environmental groups, and industry,
28:35we will require all power plants to meet clean air standards
28:38in order to reduce emissions of sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide,
28:43mercury and carbon dioxide within a reasonable period of time.
28:48And that was kind of a big deal coming from him,
28:51and I think it was seen as a way to sort of under... to out-green Gore,
28:55which probably worked.
28:57In the first few weeks of his administration,
29:00President Bush sent another signal.
29:03He appointed a governor with a strong environmental record to head the EPA.
29:07Christine Todd Whitman also backed mandatory CO2 reductions.
29:13I felt that it would be important for our country as a leader,
29:17as the number one producer of greenhouse gases,
29:19to be seen as being engaged in this issue, be a world leader here.
29:24One of Whitman's first duties was to attend ongoing climate treaty talks in Trieste, Italy.
29:31Before leaving, she says she coordinated her talking points with the White House.
29:36I went through the White House and went to all of them and said,
29:39Look, I am going to say the President has called for a cap on carbon. Is that okay?
29:43And in that White House, who said, You can go to Trieste and you can say those things?
29:49Oh, I ran it through the National Security Council. I ran it through the Chief of Staff.
29:55I ran it through everybody that I could think of.
29:58So that was Andy Card and Condoleezza Rice.
30:01Just before her trip, the former New Jersey governor was a guest on CNN.
30:10Governor, tonight, as we sit here, the environmental conservatives are up in arms.
30:18Robert Novak charged Whitman with misrepresenting administration policy.
30:23The only theory under which carbon dioxide is allegedly harmful is a catastrophic global warming theory,
30:31which was Al, as I remember, it was Al Gore's, not George Bush.
30:37Whitman reminded Novak of the President's campaign pledge.
30:41He has also been very clear that the science is good on global warming. It does exist.
30:48There is a real problem that we as a world face from global warming.
30:52And to the extent that introducing CO2 to the discussion is going to have an impact on global warming,
30:58that's an important step to take.
31:01So, without having a serious discussion with Bush,
31:04because Whitman had not had a detailed discussion on global warming with Bush
31:08at the point at which she's on CNN, and so she thought she was on safe ground.
31:13And, of course, she finds out quickly that she was not.
31:16While Whitman was in Italy, a policy review was already underway in Washington.
31:24Energy had moved to the top of the White House agenda.
31:28Vice President Dick Cheney had assembled an energy task force
31:32meeting in secret with the oil, gas, and coal industries.
31:37Up for discussion was the President committed to mandatory carbon caps.
31:43We were hearing things out of Vice President Cheney's office,
31:47who certainly made it very clear they didn't think that was the case.
31:50Then we were hearing things from the EPA administrator.
31:53We weren't sure where the President was, so the only way to deal with it
31:56is write a letter and get it on the record.
31:58What is your position? And that's what we did.
32:00The letter from Hagel and three other Republican senators
32:04intensified the debate at the White House.
32:10The Vice President asked the Energy Department to assess the costs of capping carbon.
32:16The Energy Department said cutting these emissions will be costly in a certain way.
32:23And the Environmental Protection Agency weighed in, saying,
32:28no, that report isn't applicable. This is why.
32:32And there really is growing evidence that the world is warming because of these emissions.
32:37And it's worth sticking with what you did.
32:40And the team at the White House that was assessing all this was made of political operatives.
32:46There was not a scientist in the room.
32:48And they obviously took the information that was convenient
32:52and disregarded the information that was inconvenient.
32:55Within a week of receiving the letter from the Republican senators,
32:59President Bush signed off on a reply.
33:02He would reverse his campaign pledge on carbon emissions.
33:09When Whitman returned from Europe, she requested a meeting with the President.
33:14She says she had no idea the carbon policy had been reversed without her input.
33:19I thought I had a chance. It was just the President, Andy Card, and I,
33:23and it was kind of to go through the reasons why we were going to go away from the cap on carbon
33:28and back away from it.
33:30The President told her the decision had already been made.
33:34There really wasn't much discussion about climate change
33:38or how we could live up to the campaign promise or anything like that.
33:42And then when I left, as I came out of the Oval Office,
33:46the Vice President was coming down the hall putting on his coat and said,
33:49well, is the letter ready? And took a letter.
33:51I didn't know what it was at the time, but it turned out it was the letter to Hegel.
33:55How much do you think that the Vice President had to do with that decision?
34:01I think he probably had a great deal to do with it.
34:04He is certainly the one who had the lead on the energy issues.
34:08I had long conversations back and forth with him.
34:12Well, no. I had long conversations with him.
34:15There wasn't a lot of back and forth with him.
34:17He sort of smiles and nods, and you don't really know where he is on a lot of things.
34:21But there would be even bigger news.
34:24The Bush administration had decided to withdraw from the Kyoto Climate Treaty process altogether.
34:31Climate change, with its potential to impact every corner of the world,
34:36is an issue that must be addressed by the world.
34:40The Kyoto Protocol was fatally flawed in fundamental ways.
34:50America's closest allies were stunned.
34:54Protests were immediate and worldwide.
34:58Do you think that the President understood that there was going to be a huge, huge reaction in the rest of the world?
35:08I'm not sure they understood how big a reaction it was going to be,
35:11and I'm not sure it would have made much of a difference even if they had.
35:15Because what was happening here was more important.
35:18And it was a big reaction?
35:20It was a big reaction.
35:21It was a big reaction.
35:22It was a very big reaction.
35:23It was a British paper, I think, that said, with one stroke of the pen,
35:25the President has determined that there are more important things in the world than the rest of the world, basically,
35:30that the United States is more important.
35:32And there's other issues that this is a minor thing.
35:35It was that the way it happened was the equivalent to flipping the bird, frankly, to the rest of the world,
35:42on an issue about which they felt so deeply.
35:46The key message from this White House is that we will do what we decide to do.
35:53And you can sit and listen.
35:55You can throw up your hands and run in circles.
35:57Well, that's your choice.
35:59The United States will now do what it does for whatever reason it decides.
36:05And your job, as the rest of the world, is to deal with it.
36:14But it was the White House that would have to deal with steadily mounting tangible evidence
36:20that global warming was already underway.
36:25You're beginning to see the actual measurable impacts of global warming.
36:30You're seeing enormous melting of glaciers, especially up at the poles.
36:34You're seeing sea level rise in places like Bangladesh, very low-lying countries.
36:41You're seeing Pacific islands that are already almost going underwater by then
36:46because they're such low-lying little island atolls.
36:51And so at that point, you no longer had to be a scientist to see that,
36:56wow, something is really going on here.
36:59It was very difficult for the Bush administration to come to grips with the science.
37:03hardening.
37:04And in part, the administration tried to do this by ignoring the science
37:09or trying to water it down or censor it even.
37:13One of the first to feel that censorship was Rick Piltz.
37:17He coordinated the research for the government's climate science program.
37:21It happened really starting in the first year of the new administration.
37:27At the same time that the president was pulling out of the Kyoto Protocol negotiations,
37:32the White House Science Office was telling us to start deleting all references
37:37to the National Assessment of Climate Change Impacts, a major study that we had just completed.
37:42In that $10 million study, government experts had examined the potential consequences of global warming across the country.
37:52So we looked at agriculture. What is it going to mean to food and agriculture in the U.S.?
37:56What is it going to mean to human health? What's it going to mean to forests?
38:00What's it going to mean to water resources? What's it going to mean to coastlines?
38:04I mean, we didn't have a notion that they would suddenly stop the whole process,
38:08which is what, in effect, happened during the next year.
38:11They basically stopped funding and they totally refocused the program back
38:15on trying to look at the science of climate change
38:17and not focusing at all on what the potential impacts were.
38:21The White House ordered the EPA to take the assessment off the government website.
38:28There was basically a,
38:30Thou shalt not mention the National Assessment on Climate Change anymore.
38:34And it was, you could see it excised from documents in the index, government documents.
38:42What we missed by not having that assessment out there for the public to see
38:46is people did not get a good sense of what this means to me.
38:50And the National Assessment could have helped people to see that,
38:54that this is real, it's about me.
38:56It's not about somewhere, someone else, somewhere else.
38:59In terms of a large-scale suppression of an intelligence-gathering enterprise,
39:05what it does to block a process that's essential for national preparedness,
39:10to me, makes it the central climate change science scandal of this administration.
39:17In my 30-some years in the government, I've never seen constraints on the ability of scientists
39:24to communicate with the public as strong as they are now.
39:28Nearly 20 years after he first raised the alarm about global warming,
39:33Dr. James Hansen was told by administration political appointees
39:37that he had to clear all his public statements about global warming in advance.
39:42He had given a speech at a science meeting and had been chastised for that
39:47and told there would be dire consequences if he kept doing this without letting people know,
39:52and they wanted to know his speech engagements.
39:55And I said, so let's get this in the paper.
39:59In the speech, Hansen had not only talked about the science,
40:03he also outlined policies he believed were required to prevent further disastrous climate change.
40:12I don't think my opinion about policies has any more weight than that of anybody else.
40:20But I shouldn't be prevented from saying it, and I shouldn't be prevented from connecting the dots.
40:28Throughout his administration, the president has been at odds with the scientific consensus on global warming.
40:37I suppose I want to know, what is your plan? Good.
40:40At times, raising doubts about its cause.
40:43First of all, the globe is warming. The fundamental debate, is it man-made or natural?
40:52There's no question, there will always be some uncertainty about some aspects of climate science.
40:57It's too complex an area to say otherwise.
41:00But we know more than enough to start action now.
41:03We'll solve the problem of global warming when our government gets serious,
41:07and when we sweep the obstacles out of the way.
41:10That was the opportunity that George W. Bush missed.
41:13The president, vice president, and White House environmental officials
41:17all declined to be interviewed for this program.
41:27While the Bush administration was trying to contain the warnings from government scientists on climate change,
41:36events like Hurricane Katrina were driving many Americans to reach their own conclusions.
41:42I think Americans now believe that something has happened to the climate,
41:46that they think that the weather patterns are not the same as they were 20 years ago.
41:54We now wonder, is it just Mother Nature, or is there something else that's at play here?
41:59We didn't used to think that way, but we do so now.
42:08Before Katrina, polls showed most Americans saw global warming
42:13as something that might threaten their children or grandchildren.
42:18In our poll, the number of people who said,
42:21it's going to impact my life after Katrina skyrocketed.
42:26It went to actually a majority of Americans,
42:29saying that this is a threat, which may impact me.
42:33Up! Up, girl!
42:41The change in American attitudes can be seen across the country.
42:46The earth has had cycles since God put it in place.
42:51But those were pretty much clear cut in logical order.
42:56The weather patterns we're seeing today are, there is no logical order.
43:00You know, there is no balance there like it once was.
43:03Ranchers here in central Texas began making connections between carbon emissions
43:08and what was happening in their backyard.
43:12It's been such mild winters that we have grasshopper infestation that survived the winter.
43:23About four years now, we had grasshoppers that ate everything up.
43:28They were also making connections between global warming
43:31and the state's largest utility company, TXU.
43:35The Dallas-based utility wanted to build 11 new coal-fired power plants,
43:42a plan that was fast-tracked by Texas Governor Rick Perry.
43:48When our population is expected to double in just over 30 years,
43:54power outages are just a few years away if we don't take action.
44:00You know, we stopped building coal plants in 88 in Texas for a reason.
44:04And now, you know, all of a sudden now we've got this big push
44:08to get all of these coal plants built.
44:10You've got a billion-dollar company, they've requested a permit.
44:13You know, facts say they're going to get it, so you just need to live with it.
44:17Well, we've had people tell us,
44:22well, what do you think a bunch of hicks, you know, out here in regional Texas,
44:27can do against a billion-dollar plant?
44:30The ranchers, along with environmental groups,
44:33filed suit to stop the coal plants from being built.
44:37Mayors from across the state joined the fight,
44:40backing the cowboys against coal.
44:44What is it that brought us together?
44:47One word, coal.
44:49We are alarmed that the state of Texas is currently considering
44:54doubling the number of coal-fired plants in our state.
44:58And worse than that, our governor has decided
45:02that he wants to fast-track all of it
45:04and get it up and built as soon as possible.
45:07And it just seems contrary to the direction
45:10that the rest of the country is going.
45:12In other parts of the country,
45:14local and state politicians were taking action on global warming.
45:21In California, Republican Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger
45:24signed landmark climate change legislation in 2006,
45:29the nation's first law imposing mandatory caps
45:32on carbon dioxide emissions.
45:35And we do not want to wait for the federal government
45:38to create that action.
45:39We want to create it, and we want to be the leaders in that.
45:42Governor Schwarzenegger has said
45:43the reason that we have to take such aggressive action
45:45is because the federal government
45:47has been dragging its heels for years.
45:50Our Department of Water Resources
45:52has already documented a significant shrinking
45:55in the annual snowpack in the Sierra Nevada mountains,
45:58which is the source of two-thirds of our developed drinking
46:01and agricultural water in the state,
46:03and a trend which they said that by 2050
46:05we'd lose about two-thirds of our snowpack.
46:08So you are already seeing some pretty serious...
46:11This is now. This is right now.
46:13This is right now, and that's the reason
46:14that we are, you know, frankly scared into acting.
46:22Hearing will come to order.
46:24In February 2007, an unexpected group showed up on Capitol Hill
46:30to demand federal action on global warming.
46:34It's very important to note that this group includes
46:36some of the world's largest corporations,
46:39such as General Electric, DuPont, BP, Caterpillar, Alcoa,
46:44and includes key energy companies such as Duke Power,
46:48Florida Power and Light, and PG&E from my home state of California.
46:55These corporate leaders, motivated by the reality of climate change,
46:59the fear of state-by-state regulation,
47:02and the hope of new business opportunities,
47:05wanted the federal government to impose mandatory limits on carbon.
47:10Our organization is here because we share a view that climate change
47:13is the most pressing environmental issue of our time,
47:17and also because we agree that as the world's largest source
47:20of global warming emissions, our country has an obligation to lead.
47:24BP believes that all emitting sectors of the economy,
47:27including the transportation sector, both fuels and vehicles,
47:30must be included in any national climate change policy.
47:34We must know the rules of the road if you want us to follow
47:37to reduce greenhouse gases.
47:39When you lay down the law, our universities, our companies,
47:44our national laboratories and individual citizens
47:47will lead the world in finding solutions.
47:51When I see such an extraordinary cross-section
47:54of America's free enterprise system together with the environmental groups
47:59come and form a group like this, you've got my attention.
48:06Back in Texas, it was, in fact, big business that stepped in
48:11to resolve the state's battle over the coal plants.
48:15In a stunning turnabout, the new buyers of TXU,
48:18the largest power provider in Texas, promised to take a company
48:21that had been the enemy of environmentalists and make it go green.
48:26It's the biggest leverage buyout ever.
48:29Two Wall Street private equity firms decided to buy TXU,
48:34and to put the deal together, they negotiated an unusual agreement
48:38with environmental groups.
48:41The buyers pledged to cancel plans
48:44to build eight of the 11 planned coal plants,
48:47reduce carbon emissions by 20 percent,
48:50and invest millions in wind power.
48:55The deal was brokered by the former EPA director, William Riley.
49:01I believe that this investment that we're doing in Texas
49:05is going to be green in both senses of the word.
49:08What's the significance of this deal?
49:10It is unprecedented, certainly, but is this some new model?
49:15Well, you know, I would hesitate to characterize it as a new model
49:19until it really plays out and we see how successful we are.
49:23But certainly it has been described by the environmentalists
49:26as a game-changer.
49:27And based upon the calls I'm getting from other energy companies,
49:30I think it may be, there is a sense now that the most aggressive
49:36expansion program for coal-fired power has been reconsidered.
49:41In early 2007, the United Nations Panel of Climate Scientists
49:47reported that the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere
49:50is increasing faster than ever before.
49:53Unless greenhouse emissions are cut aggressively, the report says,
49:58temperatures could increase by 5 degrees Fahrenheit by century's end.
50:04Enough to create a planet much warmer than humans have ever known.
50:09I went to the North Pole, where you're actually at the place where the world spins,
50:17and you're on sea ice that is essentially ephemeral.
50:21It's floating, drifting ice that's only a few feet thick.
50:26And the notion, when you're standing there, that later in the century,
50:30the new normal in summertime up there will be a blue ocean,
50:33is a pretty profound feeling.
50:35It's not like, oh my God, the world is ending.
50:39But it is, the world is transforming.
50:43Why do you think we've had three administrations
50:46who have not been able to deal with this issue on the federal level?
50:51What you have is people on the right know they're against regulation
50:55and they're against taxation and they're against bigger government,
50:57so they don't want to think about it because the only answers they ever see
51:00are things they hate.
51:02People on the left know the environment's important,
51:05but their answers are all regulation, taxation and litigation.
51:09And so you're caught in this gridlock,
51:12because the left insists on pain and the right insists on avoidance.
51:20This is the biggest, most complicated and most interesting issue
51:23that I think we've ever faced.
51:25You know, outside of blowing ourselves off the face of the earth,
51:28that climate change is the single most important issue.
51:32Economically, politically, socially, diplomatically,
51:35I mean, it's got everything involved in it.
51:41And whoever wins the presidency in 2008
51:44has got not only a tremendous obligation,
51:46but a wonderful opportunity to really change the future of the world.
51:58And whoever wins the world.
51:59Next time, once, Mormons were hated, persecuted, exiled.
52:13Today, they're 12 million strong.
52:17Mormons are everywhere.
52:19Follow their astonishing journey from the margins to the mainstream.
52:23It's a breathtaking transformation.
52:26And discover the truth about America's most controversial faith.
52:30The Mormons, a Frontline American Experience special presentation.
52:42To order Frontline's Hot Politics on videocassette or DVD,
52:46call PBS Home Video at 1-800-PLAY-PBS.
52:51Music
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