View Full Version : America Feels The Heat

07-16-2005, 01:19 AM
America feels the heat
George Bush refused to tackle climate change at the G8 summit, but the world is moving on without him, reports Paul Brown


Thursday July 14, 2005
The Guardian

The gap between scientists' increasingly urgent warnings about climate change and the lack of action by politicians was never more apparent than at the end of the G8 summit in Gleneagles last week.

Much of the reaction across the world was of disappointment, of hopes dashed by the intransigence of the US president, George Bush. But the fact that the issue had such a high profile at the summit was a milestone in itself, and a tribute to Tony Blair's political courage. He took the risk of being branded a failure because he was unable to influence his Iraq war ally.

It was ironic that the terrorist attack on London came on the day that the discussions about climate reached the crunch point at Gleneagles. The aftermath of the bombings deflected world attention from the stalemate that was reflected in the lack of promised action in the final communique.

If David King, the government's chief scientist, is right in describing climate change as "a greater threat than terrorism", then Thursday's terrorists let the politicians off the hook by diverting the world's attention.

In contrast to Gleneagles, the Exeter conference called by Blair in January to inform the G8 leaders of the latest science, agreed that the temperature rise the world had already experienced was 0.7C above pre-industrial levels, and that another 0.6C was inevitable. This is because there is a 30-year lag between carbon dioxide getting into the atmosphere and the warming due to the greenhouse effect catching up. These Exeter calculations add up to 1.3C, already perilously close to the 2C that the European Union adopted several years ago as the threshold that the world should not risk crossing.

At the current increasing speed of emissions, the scientists were divided on whether politicians had 10 or 20 years to reverse the current trends. Some felt that it might already be too late, including some Americans. Switch to Gleneagles six months later and there was a debate about whether Bush would accept the scientific consensus that the world was warming. The heads of government of China, India, Brazil, Mexico and South Africa were left kicking their heels in the corridor, having been invited by Blair to join the discussions on how to combat climate change, only to find there was nothing on offer.

Unlike previous summits, not even broad agreement on climate change could be reached before the summit. In addition, there was even less intelligence than usual being used by civil servants to link the other big issue, Africa, with climate change. There will be no solving the problems of hunger, disease, poverty and migration in Africa unless the increasing drought and heat is tackled at the same time.

In the event, the best world leaders managed to agree was: "Climate change is a serious and long-term challenge that has the potential to affect every part of the globe ... While uncertainties remain in our understanding of climate science, we know enough to act now to put ourselves on a path to slow and, as the science justifies, stop and then reverse the growth of greenhouse gases."

The key to the compromise was the "as the science justifies". To the scientists at Exeter, the science justifies urgent action immediately. To Bush, it means nothing needs to be done in his term of office, because as he has repeatedly said, there are too many uncertainties in the science to allow action which might threaten the wellbeing of the US economy by cutting fossil-fuel use.

So where does the world go from here, onwards to destruction, or is there a chance of reprieve? The encouraging signs were that everyone at Gleneagles, apart from Bush, was ready and willing to do more. Already three summits have been arranged between the EU and three big players -China, India and Russia - to work on joint approaches to climate change, which involve transferring new technology and updating old power plants. Climate change is top of the agenda for the UK presidency of the EU, again at the behest of the prime minister, who is hosting a conference in November on cleaner, more efficient vehicles.

There will be another attempt alongside that to move G8 forward in November, when energy, environment and development ministers meet again to make progress on the issue. The key is what flows from that and the meeting in December at the annual meeting of the parties of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in Montreal.

Since 1997, these annual meetings have been taken up with first agreeing the Kyoto protocol for industrialised nations to cut greenhouse gas emissions, and then pushing through with the details until it finally came into legal force last February. All this time, the US has been obstructive to the process; one of Bush's first acts as president was to repudiate the Kyoto protocol.

The fact is that the Bush administration failed to derail the process. Despite immense difficulties, the rest of the world, apart from Australia, has pushed forward with Kyoto. That alone gives hope for the future.

In Montreal, the agenda is no longer going to be dominated by making Kyoto work. Countries have to report on their progress towards targets (which is often poor), but the focus is what happens when the Kyoto agreement expires in 2012. It is then that further, deeper cuts in carbon dioxide emissions are needed to prevent what the treaty calls "dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system". If the more optimistic scientists are right, then there will still be time to halt climate change before it spirals out of control.

By 2012, Bush will be out of office, and there will be a new round of science when the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change provides its fourth assessment of the threat in two years time. Each of the three reports so far has been more detailed and more certain that large parts of the world are seriously threatened. The ice melting, the permafrost disappearing, forests dying and deserts growing are the predictions made in 1990 that in 2005 are documented observations. How long can the US administration stand up against a world consensus that this is alarming, and caused by man?

All the evidence is, not much longer. This is partly because the mood of the American people is changing. Eventually, even the people of Florida must see a link between the ever warmer oceans and the battering the citizens keep getting from the weather.

Even since Bush was re-elected last November there has been opinion shift across the country. The Union of Concerned Scientists in the US described his stand at Gleneagles as "stubborn and irresponsible". They say there is still time for Bush to show leadership, and they contrast his efforts with those of fellow Republican, governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's "bold initiative last month to cut California's heat-trapping pollution 80% by 2050". They also point to the fact that two weeks ago a majority of the US senate called for mandatory limits on global warming emissions, and more than 150 US mayors pledged to cut their cities' heat-trapping pollutants to 1990 levels.

For a president said to be heavily influenced by the oil and coal lobby, the advocacy for economy-wide carbon regulation by General Electric, Ford, Cynergy, Exelon and DuPont could be an awkward counterweight.

The scientists conclude: "It is also time for the president to stop repeating the deceit that reducing global warming pollution will wreck the American economy, when the growing market for more energy efficient buildings, appliances and vehicles, renewable energy production, and biomass and biofuels feedstock is already proving to be profitable for US companies."

In other words, the tide is turning both in the developing world and in America. Gleneagles could just have been the last hurrah for the climate sceptics. If the scientists are right, it had better be so.

Reactions to G8
"Bush said 'we need to develop clean technologies, and developing countries need to be assisted in having access to these technologies at affordable prices '. I think that is some step forward. Beyond that, I agree that the communique does not come to grips with the challenges of climate change."
Indian prime minister Manmohan Singh

"In the face of growing and compelling scientific evidence that global warming is advancing ... Bush's ability to block concrete action on global warming at the G8 summit is irresponsible. In Scotland, he resembled an isolated soul in a global warming tug of war."
Kevin Knobloch, president, Union of Concerned Scientists

"This is a very disappointing finale. The G8 have delivered nothing new here, and the text conveys no sense of the scale or urgency of the challenge. Bush appears to have effectively stalled all progress ... While the leaders carry on talking, the world continues warming."
Tony Juniper, vice-chairman, Friends of the Earth International