The news that Sir Nicholas Stern would be coming to the US to promote the recommendations of his global warming study was welcomed by environmentalists yesterday but there was widespread scepticism that it would contribute to a change of policy while George Bush is in office.

The White House issued a non-committal statement welcoming the Stern review as a contribution to the body of knowledge on climate changing, but did not address its calls for fundamental change in policy. "The president has long recognised that climate change is a serious issue. He has committed the nation to investing in new technologies," it said.

After initially expressing doubts, the Bush administration now accepts that industrial emissions are contributing to climate change, but it remains opposed to mandatory caps on greenhouse gas emissions and the sort of carbon trading scheme outlined in the Stern report. The White House argues that such measures would impose crippling costs on the US economy, in return for uncertain gains.

"What I see so far today does not give me any reason to believe that Mr Stern can be a spokesman who can change minds and open ears here," said Samuel Thernstrom, a former communications director for the Council on Environmental Quality in the Bush White House, now at the American Enterprise Institute.

"I don't see a whole lot new here. They're hanging a lot on what they call 'robust economic analysis', but there's a lot of uncertainty here that they don't acknowledge."

He said choosing Al Gore, who lost to George Bush six years ago in one of the closest and bitterest elections in US history, as a special adviser on climate change would lessen the report's impact in Washington.

"Sending Al Gore to talk to George Bush about this is the most ineffective choice you could make. It's like sending Bill Clinton out as a spokesman for sexual abstinence," he said.

But Eileen Claussen, the president of the Pew Centre on Global Climate Change, a Washington thinktank and pressure group, argued that the Stern report would have an impact in the US.

"We are at the beginning of a serious debate about what to do about climate change and I think this report will improve the quality of the debate," she said. "Much of the opposition will be over the costs, and Stern has been able to talk to the costs of inaction."

But she did not expect any significant change of policy in Washington until 2010, a year after Mr Bush's successor takes office.

Ms Claussen said that there was a possibility of a change of course earlier, driven by Congress. Even if Republicans retained their hold on November 7, growing alarm about climate change in the president's party might prompt bipartisan measures on greenhouse gases.

David Hawkins, the head of the climate centre at the Natural Resources Defence Council, said: "More and more political leaders are waking up to the fact that we have to do something about global warming. The Stern report will speed that process because it is a rigorous economic analysis. It takes on two major claims of opponents of action - that we don't know enough to act and that waiting will save us money. I think that Congress is going to pay more attention in the next year regardless of which party holds power."

He said Sir Nicholas's status as the World Bank's chief economist would add considerable weight to his words in Washington.

So although the report was unlikely to have any immediate impact on the US position in the short term, it would be influential in planting the seeds of future environmental policy. "There are just too many messengers," he said. "The climate deniers do not have enough guns to shoot all the messengers."

Guardian Unlimited © Guardian News and Media Limited 2006

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