Global Policy Forum

By Michael Oppenheimer

With his rejection of the Kyoto Protocol on climate change in 2001, President George W. Bush inadvertently caused an upheaval in international relations. Environmental issues had been long regarded as the poor stepchild of the foreign policy arena. But as recent remarks by Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain and the United Nations arms inspector Hans Blix made clear, the global warming issue, and particularly America's handling of it, has become a central geopolitical concern.

Speaking at a delicate moment in the Iraq crisis, Blair contrasted the current situation with "issues that affect us over time. They are just as devastating in their potential impact" as weapons of mass destruction and terrorism, "some more so, but they require reflection and strategy geared to the long-term, often straddling many years and many governments. Within this category are the issues of global poverty, relations between the Muslim world and the West, environmental degradation, most particularly climate change."

Challenging U.S. claims that the Kyoto Protocol is too costly, Blair declared that "it is clear Kyoto is not radical enough" and committed Britain to cutting its emissions of global warming gases by 60 percent by 2050. This goes far beyond the Kyoto Protocol's 5 percent reduction mandated for developed countries by 2012.

Recently, Blix chimed in by commenting, "I'm more worried about global warming than I am about any major military conflict."

Blair's speech served the obvious need to buttress his standing with a British public that is disturbed over his unwavering support of America's Iraq policy. By opposing the United States and laying claim to leadership of the dozens of countries that are working to bring the Kyoto Protocol into force, Blair clearly intended to counteract the charge that he is subservient to Bush. That an environmental issue could be deployed in this way is itself notable.

Blair's remarks serve a broader purpose, however. They are a reminder of how severely the U.S. rejection of the Kyoto Protocol and other accords has distorted its relations with erstwhile allies, preparing the ground for rancor over Iraq by depleting a decades-old stock of trans-Atlantic goodwill.

Blair's statement that "the world is in danger of polarizing around two different agendas" serves as a warning to Bush that his emphasis on near-term security concerns attends to just half the equation of human well-being. Global stability depends equally on the United States stepping up to the plate on global warming and other long-term issues.

For environmentalists who have pressed the foreign policy establishment for 20 years to take their concerns seriously, this welcome juxtaposition of global environment and international security brings along a touch of irony. In 1989, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher of Britain underwent a conversion experience on the environment, and called for an international treaty on climate change. Three years later, her leadership was an important factor in convincing a reluctant President George H.W. Bush to sign the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, the parent document of the Kyoto Protocol. The U.S. Senate ratified that agreement a few months later.

The Cold War had ended, and the environment seemed about to get its turn on the international agenda because matters considered weightier by the foreign policy establishment had been cleared off the table. To some, it was the "end of history" but unfortunately, not the beginning of continuing attention to global warming and related issues by high-level officials in the United States.

One reason the Kyoto Protocol fell afoul of the U.S. government, and one reason the Bush administration fell afoul of Europe in its hamhanded rejection of the protocol, was a failure in Washington to understand the emerging importance of the climate issue to international relations now, as well as to global stability in the future.

The situation could worsen. The Kyoto Protocol appears likely to come into force this year if, as expected, Russia ratifies it. As Europe, Japan and others implement cuts in emissions, the question of how to treat the United States, should it continue to abstain, could point in nasty directions, such as trade sanctions on products like cars, airplanes and computers whose manufacture causes emissions of global warming gases. Earlier, sanctions would have been out of the question. If the current trans-Atlantic alienation persists, one cannot exclude the possibility that Europe eventually will turn to such an approach.

The threat of global warming, first raised in 1896, has outlived many foreign policy crises. Our failure to deal with it is starting to bear a bitter harvest not only in rising seas and intensified rainstorms, but also in disruption of long-standing alliances, and interference with other foreign policy objectives. It is well past time for U.S. leaders to put the climate problem at the center of America's domestic and international agendas.

The writer is a professor of geosciences and international affairs at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Princeton University.

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