Several of my WRI colleagues and I have just come back from the Olympic Winter Games in Salt Lake City. Although I am an avid skier, and a fan of almost any sport that involves ice or snow, we were there to work. We joined the Salt Lake Organizing Committee (SLOC), and several athletes in an effort to draw attention to global warming. We got an unexpected boost of interest among journalists covering the Games in response to the Bush Administration’s Feb. 14 pronouncement on a US strategy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. In every other respect, however, the Bush plan proved to be no Valentine, as I will discuss at the close of this message.

Like Mr. Bush, most of the spectators in the snowy Wasatch Mountains saw little connection between global warming and their immediate concerns. Two million people attended the games, and it sometimes seemed as if every one of them was either driving around in an SUV or standing in line waiting to get through security. Even on clear days a brown cloud of pollution obscured the view of the Wasatch from Salt Lake City.

But global warming is an issue for the Games. The Winter Olympics depend on abundant snow and clear air, and warming trends are already creating problems for skiers. Snow has become unreliable on ski slopes at lower altitudes in the Alps, a problem the IPCC predicts will steadily worsen. Major TV networks in France have grown reluctant to broadcast popular ski competitions because unreliable snow means that they can’t depend on having a race to broadcast.

Dramatic changes in snowpack in our lifetime add proof that global warming is underway. One night forty years ago, as a teenager, I climbed the ghostly snow covered cone of Mt. Kilimanjaro, and watched the dawn rise over the Serengetti. Now the snow there is nearly gone. Climate scientists predict that in another 25 years all of the glaciers in Glacier National Park, and 90% of the glaciers in the Alps will be gone.

Studies by the U.S. Global Change Research Program project a significant loss of ski season days over the next few decades, with the greatest impact in resorts at lower altitudes in the West and Northeast. The response of the ski industry has been to use snowmaking machines to produce what nature is no longer able to provide, but snowmaking machines are gluttons for increasingly scarce water and introduce chemicals to fragile alpine environments.

Despite all this evidence, I was surprised a year ago when SLOC offered to work with WRI to educate the two million visitors and the 10,000 journalists at the Games about global warming. I was even more impressed when SLOC decided, as WRI has, to commit to reducing emissions and purchasing "offsets" (reductions by others that offset your own emissions) in order to have no net impact on the buildup of greenhouse gasses (SLOC’s success was certified by the Climate Neutral Network).

We provided reporters with a CD ROM that included basic data on global warming, and a simple calculator to analyze their own "carbon footprint" at the games. More than 300,000 people have visited www.safeclimate.net, WRI’s climate action site, which allows individuals, schools, offices, etc. to calculate their contribution to climate change, and take action to reduce those contributions. We created a global warming exhibit in the official SLC Visitors Center which featured success stories about individuals, companies, and communities who have reduced their emissions.

WRI is deeply disappointed with the White House climate change policy announced on February 14. The Bush Administration came into office emphasizing uncertainties about the science of global warming and declaring its objections to the Kyoto Protocol. A year later, after an extensive review, the Administration had a golden opportunity to set out a coherent plan showing how America would set about fighting global warming. Unfortunately, it failed to do so. The Bush policy was silent on how to achieve Kyoto’s long-term goal of stabilizing greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere.

In fact, the new policy fails to show how it contributes to any advancement in U.S. climate protection. It claims to be an "aggressive new strategy" for the next ten years, promising to reduce by 18 percent the amount of greenhouse gases in relation to gross domestic product (greenhouse gas intensity). But this is misleading, as it allows for an increase in U.S. emissions – a 14 percent increase in actual emissions over the decade if the economy keeps growing at 3 percent per year.

Even on its own terms the Bush target is little more than business as usual, since over the last 10 years greenhouse gas intensity fell by 17 percent, the same amount Bush is calling for now. The Bush plan also calls for voluntary reporting of GHG emissions. But the US already has voluntary GHG reporting programs that attract only the proactive companies.

Overall, the Bush plan was far more disappointing than any defeat of the U.S. hockey team or aerialists. On climate change policy we showed ourselves to be out of the competition. Given economic growth of 3 percent annually, US emissions would be 33 percent above the Kyoto baseline by 2012, while other industrialized countries committed to Kyoto would have cut their emissions by 5 percent.