Reducing diesel emissions and protecting wetlands are important environmental gains. However, rather than touting these small improvements, which the Bush administration has done in southern Maine on recent Earth Days, this year, the administration should do something bold. This Earth Day, it should talk about developing federal rules to reduce greenhouse gas emissions with the energy industry officials who are asking for, not decrying, such regulations. It should also meet with government officials who have found that policies to slow climate change won’t harm the economy.

Earlier this month, the CEO of Duke Energy, an electricity and natural gas company, made headlines when he suggested that there should be a tax on carbon dioxide emissions to encourage a reduction in fossil fuel consumption. Fossil fuel burning is the top source of greenhouse gas emissions. Britain has a carbon tax, called the climate levy. In addition to encouraging conservation and emissions reductions, Britain’s tax is used to fund technological improvements to make such reductions possible.

“Personally, I feel the time has come to act – to take steps as a nation to reduce the carbon intensity of our economy,” Duke CEO Paul Anderson said.

His comments followed those of the president of Cinergy Corp. a week earlier. That company’s president, James Rogers, wrote to shareholders that “as a major coal-burning utility, some might expect us to duck this issue. But avoiding the debate over global climate change and failing to understand its consequences are not options for us.”

In a letter to shareholders, Mr. Anderson said that political leaders in Washington must move forward with multi-state pollutant rules and a new national energy policy. Naturally, one reason the companies want federal regulation is to avoid a web of 50 different state regulations. Mr. Anderson also acknowledged that the changes he wants aren’t likely to happen during the current administration. President Bush withdrew the United States from participation in the Kyoto Protocol. The treaty, which took effect in February, requires 30 industrial countries to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by a combined average of 5.2 percent below 1990 levels by 2012.

True, Duke remains opposed to mandatory limits on carbon dioxide emissions and a cap-and-trade system. However, corporate understanding and acceptance of methods to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is a slow process.

New information from the federal Energy Information Administration should help. The EIA found that mandatory limits on greenhouse gas emissions, including carbon dioxide, would not significantly slow economic growth.

Enacting a suite of policies, including 36 percent higher fuel efficiency standards for vehicles, better building energy efficiency standards and an emissions reduction plan that included a cap-and-trade system, would reduce gross domestic product by between 0.10 and 0.15 percent by 2025. “The overall annual growth rate of the economy between 2003 and 2025, in terms of both real GDP and potential GDP, is not materially altered,” the EIA concluded. The greenhouse gas-reducing plan would cost each U.S. household an average of $78 a year.

Far from the economic disaster some have predicted if the United States follows the lead of many other developed countries and enacts mandatory rules to cut greenhouse gas emissions, this is a small price to pay for a more stable climate.