Do you think manmade global warming threatens the planet? Or
that it's little more than an environmentalist sham? Either way
it's time to realize that the celebrated Kyoto Protocol -- long
touted by the greens as essential to preventing ecological disaster
-- isn't just dying, it's decomposing. It's time for something
new.
The Kyoto Protocol was a 1997 pact to reduce emissions of carbon
dioxide and other greenhouse gases, or otherwise reduce these gases
in the atmosphere. Environmentalists and many scientists say
gas-induced warming is already causing a cornucopia of ills
including -- most recently -- polar bears
drowning because of melting Arctic ice.
Over 150 nations have now ratified the treaty, but the US became a pariah
for refusing to do so as did President Bush by abandoning it
altogether.
Turns out, though, there's little distinction between those who
ratified and those who didn't. Of the original 15 European Union
ratifiers of Kyoto, at best four are on course to meet the treaty's target of an 8%
reduction in greenhouse emissions by 2008-2012 from the 1990
base-year level.
"The truth is, no country is going to cut its growth or
consumption substantially in the light of a long-term environmental
problem," UK Prime Minister Tony Blair admitted in September.
But this becomes less disappointing once you learn Kyoto's dirty
little secret. Even supporters concede
that if all countries complied, the amount of warming prevented by
2100 would be at most 0.2 degrees Fahrenheit, except that 0.2
degrees is immeasurable. Certainly it won't save a single polar
bear.
Kyoto's real purpose was to lead to stricter standards later on,
such as those presented at the United Nations Climate Change
Conference in Montreal this month. But conferees were forced to go home with
little more than an agreement to negotiate some more, for
essentially the reason Blair gave. It's silly to plan a Mars
landing when your rocket can't get off the launching pad.
Of course, Europe could continue setting goals and failing to
meet them; but the EU is becoming irrelevant anyway. "By 2010, the
net reduction in global emissions from Europe meeting the Kyoto
Protocol will be only 0.1%," said Margo Thorning, senior vice
president for the free-market American Council for Capital
Formation, in recent congressional testimony. That's "because all the growth is coming in
places like India, China, and Brazil."
And bizarrely, while these countries have ratified the treaty,
they are exempt from its requirements because, until fairly
recently, they weren't major greenhouse gas producers.
"We need to focus on things like the [Asia Pacific Partnership
on Clean Development and Climate], which are driven by long-term
strategies to reduce emissions and boost growth," says Thorning.
This is a U.S.-signed pact allowing participants to set goals for
reducing emissions individually, but with no enforcement
mechanism.
Eileen Claussen, president of the Pew Center on Global Climate
Change and a former U.S. climate negotiator in the Clinton
administration, says it can't work. "If you really want results,
you have to do something that's mandatory," she told reporters.
Right. That's why those 11 EU nations are falling out of
compliance.
That's also why Kyoto signatory Canada is producing 24% more carbon dioxide than in 1990
while the U.S. is producing only 13% more. None of which prevented
Canada's Prime Minister Paul Martin from emitting a noxious gaseous
emission accusing his southern neighbor of lacking "a
global conscience."
Ultimately Kyoto has no more "teeth" than any voluntary
agreement -- yet another explanation for why it's being violated
willy-nilly. "It is not that we should take these targets too
literally," as Italy's economic minister put it. So if nations refuse to agree to real
sanctions, we must offer them constructive approaches that
emphasize maximum gain with minimum pain. That's the purpose of the
first
meeting of the Asia Pacific Partnership in January, at which
innovation and technology will take center stage rather than
top-down governmental controls.
The conference should call for ramped-up production of nuclear
power plants that produce no air emissions of any kind except for
steam. It will also probably advocate carbon sequestration, various
artificial and natural processes for removing carbon from the
biosphere.
But Kyoto? Ah, we hardly knew ye! Not that the effort's been a
total waste. It's taught us that massive international undertakings
require just a bit more than making sanctimonious speeches and
signing a sheet of paper.
topics:
Environment, Global Warming, United Nations, European Union, NATO
