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Cox said the manufacturers’ organization was not trying to dispute evidence that the planet is getting warmer. But he said officials run the risk of creating “economic havoc” in the country, especially in light of what other nations, such as China, are doing to move forward with fossil plants. Burning such fuels, such as coal and oil, produces carbon dioxide and other greenhouse pollutants.

“There’s a limit in how fast we can move our energy mix away from fossil fuels,” Cox said. He said there is already a virtual moratorium on the construction of new coal plants in the United States, a situation he said could easily produce power shortages in a few years.

Critics of the trade association’s economic analysis of global warming legislation have knocked it for, among other alleged shortcomings, looking only at the costs of reducing emissions but not the cost of inaction, potentially leading to unbridled climate change. But Cox, who said society must “wean” itself off of fossil fuels and toward other energy sources such as rewewables, said it will take a viable economy to be able to deal with the problem.

“If you shut down the economy,” Cox said, “that will take people’s minds off global warming quickly.”

 Another group that was apparently pleased with Johnson’s decision was the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank. The Los Angeles Times reported that official of the organization said it had spent months sending detailed legal analyses and memos to government officials noting the Supreme Court decision could have widespread impacts on businesses. An EPA spokesman, the paper reported, said Johnson had acted independently.

The report came on the same day Lehman found itself embroiled in the continuing Wall Street jitters over the stability of financial firms. The New York Times reported the firm’s stock fell 20 percent by the end of the day Monday. On Tuesday, the company reported a first-quarter net income of $489 million, a 57 percent drop compared to last year's first quarter.

Announcement of the new environmentalist-industrialist ad campaign comes as discussion over the economic impact of addressing climate change heats up in advance of the anticipated June debate in the Senate over the Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act. Last week, the National Association of Manufacturers and the Environmental Protection Agency released separate reports assessing the economic price tag from the legislation, sparking a spirited debate (see previous story). The legislation is named for its primary sponsors, Sens. Joseph Lieberman, an independent of Connecticut, and John Warner, a Virginia Republican.

In a statement, the Environmental Defense Action Fund, which is the non-tax-exempt lobbying arm of the Environmental Defense Fund, said that the industrial executives believe that “solving climate change is an opportunity to jumpstart the U.S. economy" and that quick action by Congress means "America can own the energy technologies that will power" the century.

"Amid a heated national debate over job losses, the business leaders point to the job-creating power of a national cap on global warming pollution,” the statement said.

The ads feature Chief Executive Officer Robert Lane of Deere, which is a major manufacturer of farming equipment and fellow CEO Alexander Cutler of Eaton, a company that produces devices that can improve the energy efficiency of buildings.

(Photograph of Sen. Joseph Lieberman via Wikipedia)

Environmentalists were more split on the EPA study, however, with Environmental Defense saying it showed the economy could grow substantially while controlling emissions, and the Natural Resources Defense Council accusing the agency of hiding the key conclusions that demonstrated emissions reductions are affordable. 

Under the Lieberman-Warner bill, known as the Climate Security Act, greenhouse emissions from major economic sectors, including electric power, transportation, manufacturing and natural gas would be capped and gradually reduced. It also would establish a trading program for emissions credits. Backers of the legislation have estimated it would reduce emissions by as much as 66 percent from 2005 levels by 2050. The full Senate is expected to take up the bill, which some environmental groups want to strengthen, in June.

The EPA report also did not discuss the economic benefits of reducing emissions. But the other newly released government analysis suggested those could be substantial. The study prepared by the U.S. Climate Change Science Program and the U.S. Department of Transportation and made public earlier in the week (see press release here) predicted global warming could pose huge threats to the Gulf Coast region. Those included increased intensity of hurricanes, sea level increases of up to seven feet, endangering roads and other infrastructure and the inundation of a “vast portion” of the coast from Houston, Texas, to Mobile, Alabama. One group said the government appeared to be trying to release the report in a way to minimize public notice. The report noted that about two-thirds of the nation's oil imports pass through the region, and that it is home to the largest concentration of freight-handling ports in the country. It painted the threat to the region's transportation network in stark terms:

"Warming temperatures are likely to increase the costs of transportation construction, maintenance, and operations. More frequent extreme precipitation events may disrupt transportation networks with flooding and visibility problems. Relative sea level rise will make much of the existing infrastructure more prone to frequent or permanent inundation – 27 percent of the major roads, 9 percent of the rail lines, and 72 percent of the ports are built on land at or below 122 cm (4 feet) in elevation. Increased storm intensity may lead to increased service disruption and infrastructure damage: More than half of the area’s major highways (64 percent of Interstates; 57 percent of arterials), almost half of the rail miles, 29 airports, and virtually all of the ports are below 7 m (23 feet) in elevation and subject to flooding and possible damage due to hurricane storm surge."

The EPA's analysis of the climate change bill, which also did not factor in last year’s energy conservation legislation that, among other things, required better gas mileage in cars, some  impacts were potentially more significant than the business groups’ figures showed. The EPA compared a variety of scenarios to a baseline that assumed compliance with existing domestic and international policies but no new ones after 2007.

 According to the EPA, by 2030, the Liberman-Warner bill could reduce the nation’s GDP by as little as less than 1 percent to as much as nearly 4 percent, or $983 billion, compared to what it would be otherwise. The business groups’ report showed a maximum impact of about 2.7 percent by 2030.

On the other hand, the EPA report also predicted there might be no flight of emissions to other countries, known as “leakage,” as energy prices rise. It also predicts that the use of fossil fuels might peak as soon as 2010, followed by a slow decline to 2050. It also shows renewable sources, such as wind and solar, playing a “significant role” if the bill were enacted. Among other highlights of the report, which were also outlined in a letter to Lieberman from Robert J. Meyers, the EPA’s principal deputy assistant administrator, the bill could reduce emissions by up to 56 percent by 2050, a slightly lower estimate than that put forward by the legislation’s sponsors, and it cites the electricity sector as providing the greatest source of emissions reductions. The report also suggested that technology to capture and store carbon could deploy by as early as 2020.

Meyers' letter also promised that the EPA would issue a revised analysis in May or June, showing the effect of the new energy law. 

In a joint statement responding to the EPA’s analysis, the senators focused on findings under certain scenarios studied by the EPA that they said showed the economy would grow almost as fast with the legislation in place as without it, that greenhouse emissions would not be shifted abroad, and that that other benefits would occur, such as driving natural gas out of the electricity sector, to the benefit of manufacturers who use gas.  

“EPA’s detailed analysis indicates that the U.S. can curb global warming without sacrificing economic prosperity,” Lieberman said in the statement. “We will examine the results closely for improvements that they might suggest for the bill.”

Warner said the results also indicated that greenhouse gases could be controlled “in a manner that leaves the economy whole and is not burdensome on consumers.”

(Wikipedia Photo: Hurricane Katrina damage to New Orleans)