<http://www.fpif.org/commentary/0103climate.html>
Climate Change: Europe at the Crossroads
Tom Athanasiou
It's hard for Americans, even progressive Americans, to imagine a
future in which the U.S. is no longer the "indispensable country."
This is as true when it comes to climate politics as it is in any
other area, and for much the same reason: the U.S. looms so large
that it simply cannot be ignored. We emit, in particular, such a high
share of world's carbon that, in the end, any climate regime to which
we do not immediately subscribe is doomed to failure.
Or so, at least, it seems. Which is why the history of the climate
talks is in large part a history of attempts to placate America.
Which is, again, a big part of the reason why the Kyoto
negotiations--and the Kyoto Protocol itself--are in such a sorry
state. The fact of the matter is that, barring sudden deliverance by
a new energy revolution on a computer-boom scale, the U.S. as we know
it today will refuse any climate treaty even remotely appropriate to
the threat. The fossil-fuel lobby is just too powerful here. Which is
why, perversely and quite inadvertently, the Bush administration may
have just done the world a colossal favor.
The "Four Pollutants" bill that George Bush has just repudiated was
as clever as anything the Washington environmental corps could ever
hope to contrive. It lumped carbon dioxide in with sulfur dioxide,
nitrogen oxide, and mercury--all "traditional" air pollutants that
not even a Republican can afford to overtly ignore--and in so doing
it promised a form of carbon regulation that was both low profile and
business friendly. It was the kind of bill that gives pragmatism a
good name, and for a while it even looked like it would work. When
EPA Administrator Christine Todd Whitman flew off to the G8 confab,
she told her counterparts that Bush intended to set "mandatory
reduction targets" for several pollutants, including carbon dioxide.
The Europeans were, according to reports, pleasantly surprised. Was
it possible that the new American administration wouldn't be total
Neanderthals after all?
There was, no doubt, a bit of pixilated hope, in Berlin as in
Washington. Maybe Bush would surprise us all and do a "Nixon to
China!" After all, the U.S. under Clinton had (almost) negotiated a
tough deal at The Hague. What if the Bush administration decided to
support it? It sounds crazy today, but not long ago you could find
seasoned enviros willing to argue that Bush was surprisingly green,
and indeed that he was set to regulate carbon. And if he decided to
support Kyoto, Bush, unlike either Clinton or Gore, could actually
deliver the Senate. Right?
Well, goodbye to all that.
Fortunately, there's another strategy brewing in Europe, and now,
after Bush's climate back flip, it just might get a proper hearing.
The idea, suddenly hot from London to Berlin, is a "European
Leadership Initiative." Its core is that Europe can now cut the chain
binding it to Washington and move toward Kyoto's ratification, while
looking South, and East, and working to build a coalition that might
actually get the Protocol over the top and into international law--a
coalition that, at least initially, does not contain the United
States.
Kyoto, crucially, is written so that no single party can torpedo it.
If Europe and the G77/China could move toward ratification, and if
they could fill out the Kyoto rules so that the Russians and the
Japanese can eventually come along, they would have started a whole
new ball game. This is all the more true because such a European/G77
ratification coalition would be under tremendous pressure from the
very beginning. To hold it together, the Europeans would have to find
ways to approach the so-far-untouchable capstone issue--the terms of
the inevitable allocation in which each nation, rich and poor, is
granted a fair share of the atmosphere's limited carbon-absorption
capacity. They don't necessarily have to engage the details, not yet,
but they have to clearly signal that when push comes to shove, and it
will, Europe will stand with the South on the essential issue of
"fairness."
Not long after the American elections, I asked Hermann Ott--Climate
Policy head of Germany's influential Wuppertal Institute and a key
enviro voice in the German foreign office--if he thought Bush's
ascension would rouse Europe's elites to support a Leadership
Initiative. The Hague talks (officially known as COP6) had just
deadlocked and the green diplomats were scurrying around trying to
organize a rematch--the "COP 6bis" meeting now scheduled for July.
The new American administration was, however, requesting a delay, and
Ott was pessimistic: "With all this talk about postponement of COP
6bis I fear that the Europeans are already retreating again."
Which is of course was no surprise: ever since World War II, the
Europeans have always buckled under U.S. pressure. They're always
retreating, and retreating again, and why would anything be different
this time around?
Maybe because the Bush people have been just a bit too clumsy, just a
bit too bald. Because at the brink of Kyoto's collapse, the U.S. has
chosen to give it a push. The Japanese, who actively want to ratify
Kyoto, are reportedly upset, and "upset" is too mild a word for the
comments coming from European leaders. No wonder, then, that the
friends of the European Leadership strategy are coming out of the
closet like never before. Suddenly, and this is new, there's open
talk is of going forward without the U.S. For example, Rainer
Hinrichs-Rahlwes, the German environmental minister, recently told
reporters that "maybe it will be necessary to ratify the [Kyoto]
protocol without the U.S. and to instead pave the way for them to
join later."
The U.S. administration is quite unperturbed. On March 16th, the
Washington Post quoted Philip Reeker, a State Department spokesman,
speaking these hoary words: "Our message to other parties, and that
includes European countries, is they shouldn't make any assumptions
about our policy until our review is complete." Which is, as the
Brits say, a load of bollocks. Clearly, the U.S. is going to play its
old game, coming on strong and hoping that the Europeans fold and
give them everything: unlimited sinks, unlimited trading, nuclear,
and all the rest of it.
Or maybe this'll get even worse. Some European NGO analysts fear that
this July, at COP 6bis, the Bush people are going to go for broke,
and loudly insist that the Kyoto Protocol, and entire process that
led to it, is unfair to the United States. In Bush's letter to
Senator Hagel--the one in which he announced that he wouldn't be
regulating carbon dioxide after all--he averred that "I oppose the
Kyoto Protocol because it exempts 80% of the world." And why wouldn't
the Bush people just continue in the same vein? The climate community
won't buy it--count historical emissions, and the 20% of the world
covered by Kyoto is responsible for 80% of the problem--but the
Republicans know it plays in Peoria.
This is going to get worse before it gets better, but it's important
to see that it could indeed get better, and maybe soon. This is
particularly so because the politics of the climate negotiations are
closely suggestive of just the sorts of "balance of power" problems
that weigh so heavily in traditional "realist" thought. As the
world's only superpower, the U.S. is free to focus on its internal
political dynamics, free to be unilateralist--but the U.S., it must
be remembered, is not quite the hegemon it used to be. And if the
Bush people overplay their hand, if they come to COP 6bis talking
about the need for the developing countries to accept emission-limits
before the U.S. can accept any of its own, then it will finally be
the hour of decision for Europe, and for all the rest of the U.S.'s
allies besides. Because if the South is left to stand alone against
such a charge, well, the whole Kyoto Process would go down in flames.
It's a dangerous situation, but it's also heavy with opportunity. The
Bush people have thrown down the gauntlet, and it's only reasonable
to expect that they'll toss another when the talks resume. At a
deeper level, though, what happens next will depend less on the U.S.
than on the rest of the world, and how it, or rather its elites, face
their now obvious conditions of existence. The science is grim, the
global economy unstable, and the political field suddenly too open
for old rules to suffice. The Europeans will probably go along with
the Bush crowd, for the habits of servility die hard. But, crucially,
they may not. The fact is that European servility no longer makes
geopolitical sense, and that the trans-Atlantic tensions engendered
by U.S. climate politics join a growing portfolio of friction points
on issues as disjoint as nuclear missile defense and genetically
modified foods. Besides, when hegemons overreach, anti-hegemonic
alliances become possible. They sometimes become necessary as well,
but necessity, as we all know, or should, becomes a force only when
people recognize and fight for it.
Just now, necessity dictates that the climate regime be protected
from the Americans. And it's possible, just possible, that the
Europeans are ready to give it a try. Not, to be sure, that this is a
time for optimism. If the Bush administration forces the issue of
developing country participation, all hell is going to break loose.
If the Europeans and the Japanese want to save Kyoto, they're going
to have to move fast, and just now the Japanese don't seem ready for
decisive action of any sort. The South, for its part, will go along
with anything reasonable, anything that gets the first phase of the
treaty in place and sets the stage, finally, for the big event--the
North/South deal that will finally determine if we can get the global
climate onto a "soft landing corridor." Or if we should just give it
up.
I could be wrong, but it looks to me like it's going to come down,
this time, to the Europeans. And I'm hoping that they're as pissed
off as they sound.
Tom Athanasiou <toma@igc.org>is the author of Divided Planet: The
Ecology of Rich and Poor, and, more recently, the cofounder of
EcoEquity, which advocates (and anticipates!) a phased transition to
a second-generation climate treaty based on per-capita carbon
emission rights. To subscribe to EcoEquity's Climate Equity Observer,
write to <ceo@ecoequity.org>.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Sat Mar 24 2001 - 20:43:49 MET