February 22, 2002
The election season cometh. Even to The White House. Abandoning Nancy Reagan's sound advice
to "just say no," the Bush Administration announced an attempt to appease European environmentalists
quickly dubbed Mini-Kyoto. As with all appeasement, the gesture immediately created demands for more. The principal
criticism being that under the Bush plan controls are voluntary, not mandatory.
Citing the Republican propensity to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, opponents of The Kyoto Protocols criticized
the administration for bringing fresh life to a dead issue. "Bush's bold rejection of Kyoto made nations look
at economic realities," says policy analyst Paul Georgia. "The treaty had effectively been killed and
now it has been brought back." Why? No answer except domestic politics comes to mind. In Washington think,
any environmental plan provides cover compared to no plan and Bush polls poorest on this issue.
As proposed, the Bush plan would rely on tax incentives for the gradual, voluntary reduction of "greenhouse
gases" consistent with economic prosperity. Historically a growing economy produces increased emissions because
of increased activity. The Bush plan calls for economic growth accompanied by decreasing emission levels. The target
is an 18 percent reduction over ten years. The standard of measure is compatible with economic growth - metric
tons of emissions per million dollars of gross domestic product. The current 183 metric tons, emissions would decline
under the Bush plan to 151 metric tons by 2012 while growth continued. The Kyoto Accords call for an absolute seven
percent reduction in emissions regardless of economic growth. It was defeated 95-0 in the Senate because of its
harsh economic effects. Implementation would reduce the U.S. economy by 30 percent, estimates say.
The Bush market-oriented plan would make it profitable not to pollute. Power plants would be given target limits
and assigned permits for each ton of pollution. When a company was able to keep a plant's pollution below government
caps, it could sell the surplus permitted pollution on the open market. An example is found in Asia where regional
power companies propose to build new cleaner plants with funds derived from selling emissions credits to existing
older and dirtier plants.
The Kyoto Protocol is seen as unworkable by many. The first reason is that the regulations are not based on sound
science. Climate is chaotic and no credible evidence has been presented that humans cause any change at all in
the climate by generating CO2. More than 17,000 scientists have given their signatures in opposition to Kyoto because
of its distorted, vague and contradictory factual underpinnings. Recent climate models and new research have further
weakened the scientific basis for global warming. Highly accurate satellite temperature readings in the troposphere
indicate virtually no warming since 1979. Antarctica has been cooling since 1966 and its ice sheet is expanding
and thickening, not shrinking and melting. The NASA scientists who started much of the alarm 14 years ago are now
saying that the very lowest range of their temperature estimates are the correct ones. That's a fraction of a degree
increase over 50 years. Yet the media marches on. A current newspaper headline screams " Global warming will
make days longer and hotter." The report behind the headlines says that the effect will be to lengthen the
day by about one microsecond (a millionth of a second) per year.
The second reason is that Kyoto will not work economically. In Kyoto, the drafters have constructed a method to
burden the United States far in excess of any burden they might carry themselves. They may target the U.S. but
it is the poor that get shot. By comparison, the $350 billion needed to comply with the demands of Kyoto would
settle the accumulated debts of the 50 poorest countries and provide clean drinking water for all. When America's
economic engine sputters, the whole world is effected. The United States is 25 percent of the world's economy.
The third reason is political. A free-for-all in carbon trading will waste billions of dollars that then cannot
be used to grow economies. Growth is the only thing that will alleviate poverty and reduce the change of violence
among the underdeveloped nations. The driving force behind Kyoto is not environmental concerns but an attack on
American success, trade, growth, development and capitalism. When your competitor is pulling ahead in the race,
you have two choices - get stronger or add a 100 pound sack to your competitor's back. It is the European elite's
way to choose the second answer. That's known as political sophistication. It's similar to saying that "nuanced'
diplomacy means always appeasing oil producing states first.
Creating the framework for compulsory energy rationing because of scientific, economic and political myths is a
giant step down a very dark path, says columnist Art Moore. The Bush administration needs to focus the same moral
clarity on the environment as it has on the scourge of a terrorism that targets innocents to force political change.
The threat may, after all, not be all that different. It's a matter of degrees.
