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AAMA: Bar Use of EPA Funds to Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions

23 July 1998

AAMA Supports Barring Use of EPA Funds to Implement Unratified Kyoto Protocol

    WASHINGTON, July 22 -- The American Automobile Manufacturers
Association (AAMA) today urged Congress to bar the U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency (EPA) from spending money on regulatory initiatives
implementing the unratified Kyoto Protocol to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
    Language contained in H.R. 4194, the Fiscal Year 1999 VA, HUD and
Independent Agencies Appropriations Bill, would prevent EPA from spending
money to develop binding regulations to implement the Kyoto Protocol to the
Framework Convention on Climate Change because the Protocol has not yet been
signed or ratified.  In a letter to Members of the U.S. House of
Representatives, AAMA President and CEO Andrew H. Card, Jr. wrote, "AAMA and
its member companies, Chrysler, Ford and General Motors, urge that the bill's
language barring the use of EPA funds to implement the Kyoto Protocol be
retained without change."
    Card noted that "the language in question takes no position on the merits
of the Kyoto Protocol, nor does it prevent EPA from encouraging voluntary
programs and promoting research and development.  It simply says that EPA
should not take steps to implement the Protocol through regulations or other
binding actions before the Senate has given its advice and consent to
ratification."
    While the State Department has stated that the Administration won't seek
to implement the Protocol before Senate approval and Presidential
ratification, the EPA has taken several actions aimed at developing controls
for greenhouse gas emissions even where there is no explicit statutory
authority for doing so, Card noted.
    "No nation in the world has yet ratified the Protocol.  EPA should not
begin to implement it," Card wrote.  "We urge you to support retention of the
Committee language as a reminder of this fact."
    AAMA is the trade association whose members are Chrysler Corporation
, Ford Motor Company and General Motors Corporation
.  Visit the AAMA on the World Wide Web at http://www.aama.com.