American reluctance is forestalling new global emissions agreements
BY ZOEY OROL AND KENZIE BOK

Though Angela Merkel’s did her best to place climate change at the top of the agenda at the July 2007 G8 summit, no concrete regulations emerged. The G8 announced its commitment to pursue “substantial” international reductions in emissions, but summit participants neither defined “substantial,” nor explicitly called for a binding international agreement. The lack of accord on these issues, due especially to the Bush Administration’s resistance to specific commitments, does not bode well for the UN climate talks slated for December 2007 in Bali, Indonesia. Indeed, it seems unlikely that the world will see significant progress on Kyoto’s replacement treaty until a new American president is inaugurated.

American Abstention
Over his two terms, President Bush has fought all attempts to set firm emissions-cutting targets. Daniel Esty, director of the Yale Center for Environmental Law and Policy, told the HPR, “It’s hardly possible to do less” than U.S. President George W. Bush has done to curb climate change over his six years in office. Bush continued this trend at the G8 summit, where he was the primary opponent of Merkel’s proposal to mandate global emissions cuts of 50 percent by 2050. Primarily because of his opposition, the agreements produced at the G8 summit comprised non-binding “aspirational goals,” instead of mandatory limits to curb greenhouse gas emissions. Gregg Easterbrook, a Brookings Institute visiting fellow and a senior editor of The New Republic, told the HPR: “There is no chance that [the G8 proposals] will actually be enforced.”

Drafting a treaty that holds nations legally accountable for their environmental impact remains improbable so long as the Bush Administration maintains its current polices while leading the country with the highest level of carbon dioxide emissions. As Andrew Dessler, a professor in the Department of Atmospheric Sciences at Texas A&M University, told the HPR, “If there are a few countries that don’t want to participate” in the collaborative endeavor of writing effective international legislation, “they can drag the process to a halt.” Currently, Bush seems inclined to shift the responsibility for global environmental policymaking to his successor rather than to make it a serious priority for the duration of his term in office. According to Esty, given rising American and global awareness of human-controlled climate change, “the odds are very strong that the next Administration, Republican or Democrat, will do more.”

Bridging the Development Divide
Much is riding on those odds. American action on climate change, says Easterbrook, would “mean a lot to the developing nations” who must be willing partners in any successful global accord. China, for example, is slated to surpass the United States in carbon emissions by 2009, according to a report issued last year by the World Energy Outlook. Yet the Chinese government has consistently refused to restrict its own emissions until the United States does the same.

Nonetheless, the international community cannot wait for a change in US leadership before taking positive steps to further involve major carbon-emitting developing nations – such as China, India, Brazil, Mexico, and South Africa – in the discussion. These nations were notably included, alongside the G8 and the EU, in the Gleneagles Dialogue on Climate Change opened by Tony Blair, then Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, in 2005. They were not, however, asked to make any significant binding commitments under the Kyoto Protocol. “The Kyoto strategy of engaging the developed world and hoping that the developing world will somehow follow is fatally flawed,” says Esty. “We need to reestablish the fundamental principle…that everyone has a common but differentiated responsibility” to mitigate the effects of climate change. Major carbon emitters among developing countries may balk at being asked to adhere to the same standards as the US or the EU in reducing their total emissions, but any successful initiative must require them to make a strong national effort to curb their emissions growth.

The UN Climate Change Conference this December seems likely to be another of the “meaningless ceremonial meetings” that Easterbrook says have characterized the post-Kyoto climate change dialogue. But developed nations can still focus on engaging their developing counterparts to establish fair and reasonable emissions-limiting frameworks and to improve sustainable technology. When America decides to join the effort to confront climate change, it may find global consensus awaiting it.¨