Rogue Nation: American Unilateralism and the Failure of Good Intentions (2003) (20 page)

The tone of the sessions was set by German Foreign Minister Klaus Kinkel’s opening remarks. He started by praising the Americans for their tradition of innovation, and then slipped in the knife by saying, ‘Pioneers would be expected to set high standards. Future generations must not be burdened with the costs of our carelessness.’
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Acting as the spokesman for the European Union, he then proposed a 15-percent cut in the 1990 level of emissions by 2010. This was less than the 20 percent the island states had proposed but far more than the American camp was contemplating. Given the boom in the U.S. economy, such a target would have meant a nearly 35-percent cut in the present level of U.S. emissions.

Then, not to be outdone, Britain’s Environment Minister Michael Meacher called on his American colleagues to make a ‘bigger effort,’ and to help them propose a cut of 20 percent in transport and industry emissions below the 1990 level by 2010. Moreover, the Europeans didn’t want to hear about sinks or trading or gases other than the three main greenhouse gases. They wanted real reductions of actual emissions and no fakery. Undersecretary of State Stuart Eizenstadt, who was leading the U.S. team, knew he’d be lynched if he came back to Washington with a deal like that. He had said before arriving in Kyoto that ‘we want an agreement, but not at any cost.’
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Now Vice President Gore chimed in, saying, ‘We are perfectly prepared to walk away from an agreement we don’t think will work.’
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But it was the vice president’s bluff that didn’t work. The Europeans refused to compromise, and after a week it looked as if the conference might fail. In a desperate effort to salvage the conference and his environmentalist credentials, Gore flew to Kyoto to address the gathered delegates. More important, he directed the hard-nosed Eizenstadt to ‘show flexibility.’ The result was a kind of Japanese compromise. The American camp got its gases, including methane, nitrous oxide (laughing gas), and three halocarbons used as substitutes for CFCs. The American camp also got sinks, but with the definitions and absorption accounting standards to be worked out later. (God is always in the details.) But there was to be no emissions trading, and on the all-important targets and timing, the agreement was for emissions reductions below 1990 levels of 8 percent for the EU, 7 percent for the United States, and 6 percent for Japan, to be achieved between 2008 and 2012. The developing countries were excused from any obligations but were invited to ‘opt in’ on a voluntary basis. The protocol was to take effect once ratified by at least fifty-five countries that collectively would account for 55 percent of carbon dioxide emissions.
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Champagne corks were duly popped, and the deal celebrated by weary negotiators and most of the environmental establishment. But it wasn’t so much a deal as a ticket to The Hague.

AT THE HAGUE

T
he whole discussion in Kyoto had had a surreal quality. Here were the United States and Europe, probably the world’s closest allies, villainizing each other over a difference of 15 percent in targeted emissions reductions. But the scientists of the IPCC had been saying for a long time that to stabilize atmospheric carbon concentrations at 1990 levels and avoid further human-induced warming by 2100, emissions would have to be immediately reduced by 60-80 percent. No one at Kyoto proposed anything near that. Moreover, it was already clear that the developing world would soon overtake the developed world as the leading greenhouse gas emitter. To the extent warming was humanly induced, it was therefore going to continue, and Kyoto would make a difference of only a few tenths of a degree in the world temperature by 2100. So what was going on?

Except in the island states, mostly posturing. Certainly there was much sincerity on the European side, but this was a situation where Europe could both do good and look good at America’s expense. Eizenstadt and others were convinced that the Europeans and developing countries saw as well an opportunity to put the United States at a certain disadvantage in economic competition. As for the developing countries, since they stood to be the big losers in most of the warming scenarios, their tactic of blaming and defying the old colonial exploiters may have been emotionally satisfying, but it was ultimately self-destructive. The perimeter countries of the American camp were trying to be liked by everyone – their domestic constituencies, the Americans, and the Europeans. It was the Japanese who eventually brokered the deal. The Americans, finally, were trapped by their own institutions and politics. Unlike the leaders of the European and other parliamentary democracies, they could not just sign a deal and be assured either that it would pass the legislature, or that, once passed, it could not be challenged in the courts. They had to show Congress they were protecting U.S. interests while also showing their own environmental supporters they were also doing the right thing.

But economics was a common denominator. No one really wanted the U.S. system to change, despite their complaints about the bloated American lifestyle and the criticism noted earlier that with only 4 percent of the world’s population America accounted for 25 percent of global emissions. As noted earlier, the proper response to the latter charge was that the United States also accounted for more than 25 percent of global GDP and was the lone engine driving world economic growth. Did anyone want that engine to slow down? No. Moreover, even the truest of true believers were making a cost-benefit calculation. If you really expected catastrophe for your children, you had to accept the 60 – to 80 – percent cuts recommended by the scientists – unless, of course, that meant catastrophe now. But it did. That’s why even the Europeans’ suggested cuts were so low. And then, without the developing countries, it wasn’t going to work anyhow, which further lowered the price anyone was willing to pay for an uncertain benefit. So if Kyoto had any point at all, it was really about buying time to enable the only practical fix – the effect of new technology. But that argued for a big umbrella system under which everyone could be comfortable and even enthusiastic. Everyone had agreed in principle at Kyoto, but the actual system remained to be worked out.

As structured, the deal was dead on arrival in the United States. A number of studies put its cost at anywhere from 1 to 4 percent of GDP in order to avoid a warming catastrophe that few believed was likely to happen.
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As one poll reported, more than 50 percent of Americans thought global warming was a big problem, but only 17 percent said they’d be willing to pay an extra 50 cents per gallon of gasoline to avert it. On top of the cost, this deal wasn’t going anywhere in the U.S. Senate without a commitment from the developing countries.

But between Kyoto and ratification there were a number of interim negotiating sessions to work out the details, and for any negotiator worth his or her salt, such ‘detail sessions’ are always a good chance to reopen the deal. The key meeting took place in the Dutch capital of The Hague on November 13-24, 2000. With the outcome of the U.S. election now up to the courts, this might be the world’s last chance to negotiate with a U.S. administration that was essentially committed to the environmental cause. The U.S. negotiating team was now under the leadership of Undersecretary of State Frank Loy, a veteran of environmental causes and international negotiations. Loy desperately needed help from the Europeans. He needed the forest sinks to be accounted for generously, and as much emissions trading as he could get. He also hoped to put a little pressure on the developing countries, which were suffering from their own emissions in the form of huge smog clouds that blanketed whole regions for days at a time.

Loy later admitted to me that the United States had not helped its cause by doing so little to reduce emissions throughout a decade of negotiations. On the other hand, he believes many EU negotiators wanted to force a change in the U.S. lifestyle and even to punish the United States. The European negotiators were all from the environmental ministries. Loy noted that when he met with officials from the foreign ministries or trade ministries of Europe, they would roll their eyes over the positions of their own environmental ministries.

On the other hand, the European negotiators genuinely feared concluding a cynical deal that would be vitiated by loopholes. Any fakery by the developed countries, they thought, would kill their hopes of getting a commitment from the developing countries. In any case, after days of the toughest bargaining, Loy and Britain’s Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott came to an agreement that gave Loy not what he wanted but at least what he needed on sinks and trading. At 4 A.M. on Thanksgiving Day a three-page working paper was initialed, and again, the champagne corks popped. But Prescott had to clear it unanimously with the other EU delegates, and the whole thing fell apart when he tried to do so the next day. A month later, the United States had a new president whose name was not Al Gore.

TO MARRAKESH

G
eorge W. Bush could have allowed the sleeping dog of Kyoto simply to continue its nice nap. Given the resistance of Canada, Japan, Russia, and Australia, it would have been next to impossible to achieve the necessary fifty-five signatures covering 55 percent of emissions for ratification. Thus the treaty would have never come into force. Or Bush could have launched a renegotiation. Instead, he achieved satisfaction by publicly announcing that the United States would never ratify the agreement.

There were three reasons for this. First, Bush had little sympathy with the environmental crowd in either the United States or Europe. As an oil man and a businessman he believed in drilling and growth, and was suspicious of government regulation. His energy plan called for drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Area, boosting federal funding and support of research and development in coal technology, and relaxing regulations on coal-fired plants. As one State Department official told me, ‘The Bushies think environmentalism is where all the commies went after the collapse of the Soviet Union. They hate ‘em.’ Second, Bush didn’t believe the science on global warming and really thought the Kyoto measures would hurt the U.S. economy. His economic advisers were from the supply side and the aluminum industry. Third, Bush had made campaign promises to the coal, power, oil, and steel companies in order to win critical states like West Virginia. Now it was payback time. That his announcement came just before his first official trip to Europe had the added benefit of letting the European wimps know that a new wind was blowing from Washington.

Beyond arousing a diplomatic and media firestorm, however, the Bush rejection of Kyoto galvanized the Europeans to take the lead as they had never done before. They resolved to show the United States that it was not indispensable, and to press ahead with ratification. Bush only hardened their determination when he tweaked them during his visit about not meeting their own goals. Without a U.S. signature, the EU had to get all the others from the perimeter of the U.S. camp on board. They proposed that forest sinks credits be negotiated country by country rather than allocated on the basis of fixed criteria, which led to very generous credits, especially for Canada and Russia. The Japanese and Australians wanted more emissions trading and that too was expanded. In the end, to bring everyone else under the umbrella, the EU agreed to everything Frank Loy and Stu Eizenstadt had been asking for, and more. The revised Kyoto Protocol was ratified and put into effect on November 10, 2001, in Marrakesh. Undersecretary of State Paula Dobriansky sat watching as the other delegates signed. Much of the world now saw the United States, the inventor of environmentalism, as its enemy.

WHAT IS TO BE DONE

I
n March 2001, the IPCC issued its third assessment, in which the findings of the first two were largely confirmed and strengthened. The report states authoritatively that over the twentieth century temperatures have risen by 0.6 degrees Celsius; that the rise has occurred in the lowest 8 kilometers of the atmosphere (resolving the earlier discrepancy between surface temperature data and atmospheric temperature data); that sea level has risen by 0.1-0.2 meters; and that ocean temperatures have also increased. There has been more precipitation, more heavy precipitation events, and an increase in cloud cover. Emissions due to human activities continue to alter the atmosphere in ways that are expected to affect the climate, and there is new and stronger evidence that most of the warming over the last fifty years is attributable to human activities. The confident tone of this report is based on improvements in the computer climate models and in their abilities both to predict the past and to capture elements, such as solar activity, previously not included in the calculations. The scientists admit they cannot simulate all aspects of climate, and note that there remain uncertainties with regard to clouds and their interaction with other elements. Nevertheless, they can confidently predict a surface temperature increase of 1.4-5.8 degrees Celsius over the next century. This is larger than what the world experienced in the twentieth century and probably unprecedented in the last ten thousand years. All these projections assume business as usual by humans, meaning continually rising atmospheric carbon concentrations. On that basis, the implications are continually rising sea levels, more extreme weather events, more extensive droughts, and continued retreat of glaciers and snow lines. There is also the possibility of a tipping point or points to make these changes sudden and drastic rather than gradual.

No one really knows how much of this will occur because both human and natural activity are sure to change. Perhaps they will ameliorate the problem, but they could also exacerbate it. Given the state of knowledge today, ignoring the issue would seem to be a complete roll of the dice. On the other hand, to be sure of preventing the problem means immediate emissions reductions on a scale whose economic consequences no one can reasonably contemplate. Somewhere in the back of their minds, most observers think new technology or other changes in human behavior will occur to relieve the problem. And that, indeed, seems to be the only real answer. Since we can’t really save our way to salvation, we will – in the American way, in the best sense – have to invent our way there.