President Bush forged a global warming deal last week among six key countries, each responsible for burning too much fossil fuel and adding too much pollution to the atmosphere. We wanted to cheer the accord, but a close look suggests that there’s less to it than meets the eye.
The underlying notion is good: The United States and other industrialized countries should transfer efficient energy technologies to developing nations. That’s the same policy the first President Bush began 13 years ago, and the United States already has bilateral agreements with India, China and other energy-hungry developing nations. While the policies have helped they’re not nearly adequate to deal with the climate change challenge and certainly can’t substitute for specific, mandatory reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.
Skeptics will conclude the new pact is a publicity stunt that magnifies the reluctance of the six countries to curb greenhouse gas emissions. For one thing, there’s the curious timing. It followed a more important announcement by British Prime Minister Tony Blair at the recent G8 summit. He had won an agreement to convene a high-level international meeting in November to start discussions on how to follow-up the Kyoto treaty before it expires in 2012.
Blair hopes to fix Kyoto’s biggest flaw: The pact requires industrialized nations to reduce their output of carbon dioxide, a chief culprit in global warming, but didn’t impose mandates on developing countries such as China and India. That gap must be closed before new problems arise. The United States now is the worst emissions offender (with about 5 percent of the global population we emit about 25 percent of the greenhouse gases). But in two decades, India and China will become the biggest sources of human-generated carbon dioxide. If people want to address climate change, developing nations must be part of the answer.
The U.S. slated its greenhouse meeting in November – the same month as Blair’s meeting – with China, India, Japan, South Korea and Australia (the latter is the only industrialized nation besides the United States to not adopt the Kyoto treaty).
The U.S. may have wanted to deflect public focus from Blair’s effort. But it is more likely that the U.S. effort will call attention to the fact that the Bush administration’s regressive polices have erected the biggest obstacles to real progress on the most pressing environmental issue of our era.
The United States should participate in any and all international meetings that hold out the promise of progress on anti-pollution efforts. This most recent agreement needs to be seen as a building block, not a solution.
