They’re home now, or on their way, the 15,000 (or was it 20,000?) assorted politicians, environmental advocates and journalists who descended on Bali to craft a road map to — another conference in 2009, at which they hope to negotiate a successor to the Kyoto Protocol, due to expire in 2012.
A punster might say that the conferees from 190 nations left on a Bali high. Whether their joy will remain unrestrained depends on when they realize that no road map alone will be able to make cuts in those greenhouse gases a reality. That will take a willingness to face up to the costs that will have to be borne.
Which is why the Bali crowd has so much in common with the oil producers’ cartel that met in Abu Dhabi a few weeks ago. Both favor high prices for crude oil and its products, gasoline and heating oil.
The oil producers want to keep crude oil prices high so that the massive shift in wealth from consuming countries to their sovereign wealth funds continues.
The greens favor high oil prices because consumers use less of the stuff when it costs more, and because high prices for oil make nuclear, wind, solar and other forms of energy more competitive in the marketplace.
Meanwhile, the hunt for the proverbial free lunch is on. The most efficient way to cut down on theuse of fossil fuels is to make then more expensive by taxing them, or the emissions they create. But politicians are generally unenthusiastic about making the cost of cleaning up the environment transparent.
So most proposals, including those favored by congressional Democrats — the offerings of Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., and Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich., are honorable exceptions — are built around a single proposition: Hide the cost of emissions reduction and direct consumer wrath to others.
Legislation to increase the fuel efficiency never mentions that the cost will be reflected in the price of vehicles Americans will buy, and in the higher death toll associated with lighter cars and trucks.
Mandates to increase the use of ethanol do not mention that the current mandate has already driven up the price of corn and wheat, and of meat and poultry by making animal feed more expensive. Requirements that utilities obtain more of their electricity from renewable sources don’t lay out the effect on utility bills.
And new taxes on oil producers will certainly drive up prices for gasoline and heating oil. No matter: The blame will go to auto manufacturers, supermarkets, electric utilities and oil companies, not the politicians.
Which brings us back to Bali, where the negotiators had two main tasks. The first was to formulate an agenda that keeps America in the emissions-reduction game. This they seem to have accomplished, at least until 2009.
The second was to attract the developing countries, most notably China and India into the game. Remarkably, the delegates who displayed such hatred of the United States showed only love and kindness toward China, which next year will become the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases.
Going from words on paper to facts on the ground will be difficult because every alternative to fossil fuels has its own problems. Nuclear advocates are pushing their emissions-free technology, and plans for 32 new plants are on U.S. drawing boards.
But significant progress is unlikely until political opposition to plans for the disposal of nuclear waste can be overcome. Ask Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada when he plans to welcome the stuff into the Yucca Mountain disposal site, and you’ll know when serious construction work will begin.
Nor will renewables provide a free lunch. Offshore wind power “is more expensive than gas-fired,” notes Alan Moore, and he is no less than the managing director of National Wind Power.
And those awful windmills might ruin his view, says environmental advocate Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., who is leading the battle against an offshore wind farm visible from his family’s waterfront compound on Cape Cod.
Meanwhile, lurking in the background is the environmentalists’ bete noire, coal. China forges ahead with construction of so many coal-fired generating stations that it will displace America as the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases even if all of the 45 new coal-fired power plants under construction or already permitted, and the 76 in early stages of development in America come into service.
So it’s going to be a hard road from Bali to a reduction in carbon emissions, and nowhere near as much fun as Bob Hope and gang had on “The Road To Bali.”
Examiner columnist Irwin Stelzer is a senior fellow and director of The Hudson’s Institute’s Center for Economic Policy.
