April 2, 2001
Whether George W. Bush's bull-in-a-china-shop destruction of the international treaty on global warming proves to be an environmental catastrophe remains to be seen. But this much is crystal clear: It was hands down the most tone-deaf diplomatic blunder in recent memory.
With top environmental officials from across the globe gathered to discuss the Kyoto treaty and looking for US leadership, Bush sent Christie Whitman to say we were taking our ball and going home. This, of course, was a month after Whitman, administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, had assured our trading and diplomatic partners that the United States was on board with plans to curb global warming.
Europe and Japan took the about-face as a face slap. The Bush world view, they complained, is not mere passive isolationism. It is more like to-hell-with-you-ism.
Nearly universal denunciations followed, along with promises that the slight would be remembered during upcoming trade negotiations. The World Council of Churches, among others, said the US renunciation of its Kyoto commitments was a "betrayal of their responsibilities as global citizens."
If Bush is showing leadership, it is as the pace car in an international race to the environmental bottom.
To be sure, the Kyoto process had plenty of serious obstacles before the US withdrawal. The accord would require 39 industrialized countries to reduce emissions of heat-trapping gases by an average of 5.2 percent by 2012 compared with their 1990 levels. More than 100 countries signed it, but none has significantly curbed emissions of carbon dioxide.
Because the United States alone produces about one-fourth of all greenhouse gases, its participation is critical to address climate change. But Bush says curbing emissions is "not in the United States' economic best interest."
Bush's false choice between healthy environment and healthy economy is a thoroughly discredited anachronism. The notion that burning more oil and coal is the only way to grow the economy is equally self-defeating. Although Bush sees the world and everything in it from a businessman's viewpoint, he is blind to the growth potential in a shift to clean technologies, which would be akin to a second industrial revolution.
The United States is uniquely equipped to lead the way in, and to profit mightily from, new technologies and energy sources. To be perfectly venal about it, an international treaty compelling every industrialized country to cap fossil fuel consumption creates a massive, ready market.
Having abandoned Kyoto, Bush says his administration intends to make other plans to stem global warming. But he should have designed this better mousetrap before he poisoned the Kyoto housecat.
As Whitman herself put it in a memo to the president last month, Kyoto was "the only game in town" to other industrialized nations. "Mr. President," she added, "this (global warming) is a credibility issue for the US in the international community. It is also an issue that is resonating here at home. We need to appear engaged."
But Bush lacked the wisdom to accept her counsel. "While I worry about emissions," he said last week, "I'm also worried about the fact that people may not be finding jobs in America."
While his concern for the "little people" is touching, it would be nice if it extended to the even smaller people who will be inheriting this beleaguered planet.
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