Emissions of hot air at international meetings designed to prevent Earth from warming are rising. Just last week, more than 80 heads of state convened in New York under the aegis of the United Nations to decide how to tackle climate change.
This was immediately followed by Bill Clinton’s modestly titled “Clinton Global Initiative,” at which the former president-turned-global-philanthropist (now, as when in office, specializing in disbursing other people’s money) called for the greatest mobilization of resources since World War II to attack global warming, and even consented to allow former Vice President Al Gore, no favorite of the Clintons since he distanced himself from them in his abortive 2000 campaign, to address the meeting.
Not to be outdone, President Bush gathered senior government officials from the world’s 16 largest greenhouse gas emitters to a two-day meeting in Washington, to persuade them to join the U.S. as “part of this global effort to do our duty.”
The group, which produces 80 percent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions, included Brazil, China, India, Mexico, South Africa and Indonesia — developing nations that are not required by the Kyoto Protocol to agree to binding emissions reductions.
More meetings are scheduled. In December, ministers are off to Bali, Indonesia, for further discussions to prepare for still another meeting in Denmark in 2009. There, the nations hope to agree to a successor to the Kyoto Protocol, due to expire in 2012. One shudders at the thought of the size of the combined economic footprints of these globe-trotters.
Meanwhile, back in the real world, China continues to build emissions-producing coal plants, most industrialized countries fail to meet their emissions-reduction targets, the emissions-trading scheme favored by the EU collapsed due to overly generous issuance of permits, and the U.S. will challenge the legality of a proposed EU tax on airline emissions. Not very green, all of this.
Also, there is no agreement on the basic question of the desirability of internationally agreed mandatory reduction targets. Each country should, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice says, “make its own decisions, reflecting its own needs and its own interests. …”
That message that did not go down well with the president’s more collectivist-minded guests, who are comforted by the thought that when they gather in Denmark in 2009, Bush will be back in Texas and the White House will be occupied by someone likely to be exposed to Bill Clinton’s husbandly advice.
But for now, they must deal with Bush, who will not sign any deal that threatens American economic growth. Which is why the decentralized American federal system is so important.
Under the leadership of “governator” Arnold Schwarzenegger, California has come up with stringent controls aimed at reducing carbon dioxide emission by 25 percent by 2020.
Because California is such a large market for appliances, vehicles and all sorts of goods, manufacturers will have to meet its standards and, so as not to forfeit economies of scale in manufacturing, produce goods to be marketed in other states to similar standards.
And California is not the only state moving ahead with emissions controls. The Economist estimates that states accounting for more than half of U.S. greenhouse-gas emissions have put in place programs to reduce those emissions.
A cynic might point out that all these targets are to be met long after the politicians who have imposed them have retired from public life, so that they get the political benefit of doing good while leaving the cost of their good deeds to be borne by their successors.
Or that they areless explicit about how to meet these goals than they are as to the targets themselves. We do know that nuclear power is to play a role, but not yet the form and magnitude of the subsidy that will be required to make nuclear stations competitive with coal- and gas-fired stations, or how to dispose of the radioactive waste.
We do know that market mechanisms are now more popular than the old command-and-control systems, but not yet whether so-called cap-and-trade systems or taxes on carbon dioxide emissions will produce the most efficient responses to limits on such emissions, or whether Congress is prepared to buy into any such program.
And we do know that the majority of the world’s largest publicly traded companies are committed to reducing their emissions, but not how they plan to do so.
In short, we now have a better idea than ever where we want to go, but no clear and agreed view how to get there. At least, not yet. Perhaps after a few more meetings. …
Examiner columnist Irwin Stelzer is a senior fellow and director of The Hudson’s Institute’s Center for Economic Policy.
