Beyond Bush

"After eleven days of negotiations, governments have come up with acompromise deal that could … even lead to emission increases. … The highlycompromised political deal … is largely attributable to the position of theUnited States which was heavily influenced by fossil fuel and automobileindustry interests. The failure to reach agreement led to the talks spillingover into an all night session …"(1)

These are extracts from a press release by Friends of the Earth. So what?Well it was published on December 11th - I mean to say, December 11th 1997. TheUS had just put a wrecking ball through the Kyoto Protocol. George W Bush wasinnocent; he was busy executing prisoners in Texas. Its climate negotiators wereled by Albert Arnold Gore.

The European Union had asked for greenhouse gas cuts of 15% by 2010. Gore’steam drove them down to 5.2% by 2012. Then it did something worse: it destroyedthe whole agreement.

Most of the other governments insisted that the cuts be made at home. ButGore demanded a series of loopholes big enough to drive a Hummer through. Therich nations, he said, should be allowed to buy their cuts from othercountries(2). When he won, the protocol created an exuberant global market infake emissions cuts. The western nations could buy "hot air" from the formerSoviet Union. Because the cuts were made against emissions in 1990, and becauseindustry in that bloc had subsequently collapsed, the FSU countries would passwell below the bar. Gore’s scam allowed them to sell the gases they weren’tproducing to other nations. He also insisted that rich nations could buy nominalcuts from poor ones. Factories in India and China have made billions by raisingtheir production of potent greenhouse gases, so that carbon traders in the richworld will pay to clean them up(3).

The result of this sabotage is that the market for low carbon technologieshas remained moribund. Without an assured high value for carbon cuts, withoutany certainty that government policies will be sustained, companies havecontinued to invest in the safe commercial prospects offered by fossil fuelsrather than gamble on a market without an obvious floor.

By ensuring that the rich nations would not make real cuts, Gore alsoguaranteed that the poor ones scoffed when we asked them to do as we don’t.When George Bush announced, in 2001, that he would not ratify the protocol, theworld cursed and stamped its feet. But his intransigence affected only theUnited States. Gore’s team ruined it for everyone.

The destructive power of the US delegation is not the only thing thathasn’t changed. After the Kyoto Protocol was agreed, the British environmentsecretary, John Prescott, announced that "this is a truly historic deal whichwill help curb the problems of climate change. For the first time it commitsdeveloped countries to make legally binding cuts in their emissions."(4) Tenyears later the current environment secretary, Hilary Benn, told us that "thisis an historic breakthrough and a huge step forward. For the first time ever allthe world’s nations have agreed to negotiate on a deal to tackle dangerousclimate change."(5) Do these people have a chip inserted?

In both cases the United States demanded terms which appeared impossible forthe other nations to accept. Before Kyoto, the other negotiators flatly rejectedGore’s proposals for emissions trading. So his team threatened to sink thetalks. The other nations capitulated, but the US still held out ontechnicalities until the very last moment, when it suddenly appeared to concede.In 1997 and in 2007 it got the best of both worlds: it wrecked the treaty andwas praised for saving it.

Hilary Benn is an idiot. Our diplomats are suckers. United States negotiatorshave pulled the same trick twice and for the second time our governments havefallen for it.

There are still two years to go, but so far the new agreement is even worsethan the Kyoto Protocol. It contains no targets and no dates. A new set ofguidelines also agreed at Bali extend and strengthen the worst of Al Gore’strading scams, the clean development mechanism(6). Benn and the other dupes arecheering and waving their hats as the train leaves the station at last, havingfailed to notice that it is travelling in the wrong direction.

Though Gore does a better job of governing now that he is out of office, hewas no George Bush. He wanted a strong, binding and meaningful protocol, but USpolitics had made it impossible. In July 1997 the Senate had voted 95-0 to sinkany treaty which failed to treat developing countries in the same way as ittreated the rich ones(7). Though they knew this was impossible for developingcountries to accept, all the Democrats lined up with all the Republicans. TheClinton administration had proposed a compromise: instead of binding commitmentsfor the developing nations, Gore would demand emissions trading(8). But evenwhen he succeeded he announced that "we will not submit this agreement forratification [in the Senate] until key developing nations participate"(9).Clinton could thus avoid an unwinnable war.

So why, regardless of the character of its leaders, does the United Statesact this way? Because, like several other modern democracies, it is subject totwo great corrupting forces. I have written before about the role of thecorporate media (particularly in the US) in downplaying the threat of climatechange and demonising anyone who tries to address it(10). I won’t bore youwith it again, except to remark that at 3pm eastern standard time on Saturdaythere were 20 news items on the front page of the Fox News website. The climatedeal came 20th, after "Bikini-wearing stewardesses sell calendar forcharity" and "Florida store sells ‘Santa Hates You’ T-shirt"(11).

Let us consider instead the other great source of corruption: campaignfinance. The Senate rejects effective action on climate change because itsmembers are bought and bound by the companies which stand to lose. When youstudy the tables showing who gives what to whom, you are struck by twothings(12).

One is the quantity. Since 1990, the energy and natural resources sector(mostly coal, oil, gas and electricity) has given $418m to federal politiciansin the US(13). Transport companies have given $355m(14). The other is the width:the undiscriminating nature of this munificence. The big polluters favour theRepublicans, but most of them also fund Democrats. During the 2000 presidentialcampaign, oil and gas companies lavished money on George Bush, but they alsogave Al Gore $142,000(15), while transport companies gave him $347,000(16). Thewhole US political system is in hock to people who put their profits ahead ofthe biosphere.

So don’t believe all this nonsense about waiting for the next president tosort it out. This is a much bigger problem than George W Bush. Yes, he isviscerally opposed to tackling climate change. But viscera don’t have much todo with it. Until the American people confront their political funding system,their politicians will keep speaking from the pocket, not the gut.

www.monbiot.com

References:

1. Friends of the Earth UK, 11th December 1997. Kyoto Deal Will Not StopGlobal warming. Press release.

2. Through Emissions Trading, Joint Implementation and the Clean DevelopmentMechanism.

3. See Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation, September 2006. Carbon Trading: ACritical Conversation on Climate Change, Privatisation and Power. DevelopmentDialogue 2006, no 48.

And:

Michael Wara, 8th February 2007. Is the global carbon market working? Naturevol 445. p 595.

4. Department of the Environment, Transport & The Regions, 11th December1997. Historic Agreement Reached In Kyoto On Climate Change. Press release509/Environment.

5. No author, 15th December 2007. Dealagreed in Bali climate talks.

6. United Nations Climate Change Conference, 15th December 2007. Decision-/CMP.3
Furtherguidance relating to the clean development mechanism.

7. You can read the Byrd-Hagel Resolution here

8. You can see how these two issues were played against each other in thisstatement by the Senate Republican Policy Committee:

9. CNN, 11th December 2007. ClintonHails Global Warming Pact.

10. See in particular George Monbiot, 2007. Heat: how to stop the planetburning. Chapter 2. Penguin, London.

11. Fox News, viewed at8.21pm UK time, 15th December 2007. Updated on the hour.

12. opensecrets.orggives an almost-comprehensive account.

13. opensecrets.org

14. opensecrets.org

15.opensecrets.org

16. opensecrets.org