What was Tony Blair thinking? Surely he knows President Bush well enough by now to understand his intransigence on certain positions. Once stated, his acceptance or rejection of any idea seems to become part of his core belief system. Unassailable, intractable, not even open to rational discussion.
Bush decided long ago that global warming, like evolution, is just a theory. And a suspect theory at that. It’s bad for the American economy.
For the British P.M. to bring up the Kyoto Protocol in particular, or even climate change in the abstract, was to prompt the presidential eyes to squint, the jaw to set, the Texas boot heels to dig in even deeper.
Never mind that scientific evidence is accumulating daily in melting polar ice, shrinking glaciers, and rising ocean temperatures displacing sea life and threatening water supplies all over the planet.
Never mind that 142 countries signed on to the treaty that took effect in February. Signatories agreed to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions to below 1990 levels over a five-year period starting in 2008. Apparently they all agree that doing nothing will hurt their economies in the long run much more than protecting the status quo.
So the country that produces the most emissions, and can most easily afford to cut back, will not participate. This is a national embarrassment at a time when the country is seen worldwide to have several more damaging cases against its policies. So basically, the nation is denied an opportunity to be a good citizen of the planet because its president doesn’t believe in science and doesn’t want to offend his supporters in the oil and coal industries.
This is also reflected in his reluctance to mandate meaningful reductions in mercury (mostly from coal-fired power plants), not a greenhouse gas, but a neurotoxin blamed for fetal abnormalities and childhood cancers from contaminated fish. To allow mercury to persist in the food chain through the trading of pollution credits because our leader doesn’t understand the science is appalling, but that’s another story.
Strange and refreshing, then, that several of the nation’s largest companies-General Electric, Duke Energy and JPMorgan Chase among them-are actually pressing for tougher government restrictions on industrial releases of carbon dioxide and have emerged as strong supporters of the effort to slow global warming.
While the Bush administration claims such regulations would hurt America’s economic growth, those responsible for it are saying they actually see economic opportunities in cutting greenhouse gases and want to be involved in shaping the regulations that must inevitably be made.
During congressional hearings last week, executives of DuPont, United Technologies and Baxter International told legislators they want to begin reducing emissions now, because they feel the public will soon demand it. To participate in the global marketplace, companies will have to conform to tighter European Union standards.
But what congressional leaders heard last week was increasing corporate impatience with weak voluntary guidelines and the belief that the country will miss out on the opportunity to participate in the world’s growing demand for cleaner technologies.
Japan is already the world leader in solar power cells and Europe leads in production of wind turbine technology.
American automakers are the laggards, but while they’re fighting California’s tighter emission standards on a legal premise that they actually mandate increased fuel efficiency, verboten under administration policy, at least 17 other states are creating their own versions. Corporations rightly fear a hodgepodge of state and city restrictions filling the vacuum of weak federal standards. Is General Motors current financial crisis caused by more than labor union dictates? Are American car companies hopelessly out of touch with what drivers really need and expect from a car? Advertising behemoth gas hogs as status symbols is no longer a viable sales strategy. Government coddling of automakers is delaying the progress they could be making in competing with foreign companies.
Combustion of fossil fuels accounts for nearly three-quarters of carbon dioxide emissions, the primary global-warming gas. The other one-quarter is caused by deforestation (in the name of economic progress).
Unfortunately, it seems it will take more than poor Tony Blair to convince Bush his rejection of science in the name of economics is out of step both with business leaders and with the rest of the world.
A recent cartoon shows Bush addressing a meeting on global warming saying, “My plan would allow younger Americans to set aside a portion of their own water in personal ice cube trays.”
Very funny, if only it weren’t so true.