Elizabeth Kolbert: Leading Causes

Leading Causes

by Elizabeth Kolbert, New Yorker, October 5, 2009

On October 13, 1992, the United States became the world’s first industrialized nation to ratify a treaty on climate change. The treaty committed its parties to the important, if awkwardly worded goal of preventing “dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system.” In acknowledgment of the fact that America and its allies were largely responsible for the problem, the pact set a different standard for them; Europe, Japan, Australia, and the United States were supposed to “take the lead in combating climate change and the adverse effects thereof.” Signing the instrument of ratification for the treaty, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, President George H. W. Bush noted the special responsibilities that the developed nations were taking on; they “must go further” than the others, he said, and offer detailed “programs and measures they will undertake to limit greenhouse emissions.”

The convention remains in effect, and for the past seventeen years the United States has insisted that it is living up to its terms. Under Bill Clinton, this claim was implausible; the U.S. took no meaningful action to reduce its emissions. Under George W. Bush, it became a bad joke. (When the Bush Administration wasn’t handing out tax breaks to fossil-fuel companies, it was muzzling climate scientists and storming out of international negotiations.) The election of Barack Obama seemed in this, as in so many other areas, to offer a fresh start. A few weeks after his victory, Obama vowed to open a “new chapter” on climate change. And yet, almost a year later, the United States is again—or, really, still—stuck in the same old pattern. We keep saying that we want to be marching at the front of the parade, and then hanging back with the tubas.

Last week at the United Nations, at what was billed as the highest-level meeting on climate change ever, there was general agreement about the approaching disaster. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon warned that rising temperatures would “increase pressure on water, food, and land; reverse years of development gains; exacerbate poverty; destabilize fragile states; and topple governments.” President Oscar Arias Sánchez, of Costa Rica, described the session as taking place “on the brink of a precipice for our planet.” President Nicolas Sarkozy, of France, stated, “We are the very last generation that can take action.”

“If things go business as usual, we will not live,” President Mohamed Nasheed, of the low-lying Maldives, told the assembled delegates. “We will die. Our country will not exist.”

President Obama, too, was apocalyptic. “We risk consigning future generations to an irreversible catastrophe,” he said in the first of three U.N. addresses. He went on to list the various steps that his Administration has taken—setting new automobile-efficiency standards, investing billions of dollars in weatherizing homes and office buildings, establishing reporting rules for the nation’s largest greenhouse-gas emitters. “The developed nations that caused much of the damage to our climate over the last century still have a responsibility to lead,” he said, before adding, unconvincingly, “And we will continue to do so.”

What would it take for the United States actually to show leadership, instead of just talking about it? First, it would have to impose binding emissions limits of the sort that it has spent the last two decades evading. The Europeans, who are already operating under such constraints, have pledged to cut their emissions by 20% by 2020, and have said that they would agree to a 30% cut if other nations followed suit.

The new Japanese Prime Minister, Yukio Hatoyama, has committed his country to cutting its emissions by twenty-five per cent. In the United States, a bill that would reduce emissions by seventeen per cent narrowly passed the House in June, only to become bogged down in the Senate; it is unclear if the bill will reach the Senate floor this year, or, if so, whether it has the votes to pass. (The United States is using a baseline year of 2005, while the Europeans and the Japanese are using 1990, which means that the proposed American cuts are significantly more modest than they sound.)

There is no reason to doubt Obama’s sincerity about climate change. In addition to the actions he mentioned at the U.N., his Administration has, most significantly, classified carbon dioxide as a pollutant, a move that could eventually lead to its regulation under the Clean Air Act. And the President is clearly frustrated by the stalemate in the Senate. But at this late date sincerity is not enough. When the President proposed that Congress take up a climate bill along with health-care legislation and, on top of that, regulatory reform, he made an enormous gamble. This gamble, at some point, could have been called bold; increasingly, it just seems naïve.

 

For the world to avoid “dangerous anthropogenic interference,” the United States is, finally, going to have to live up to the commitments it made under the Framework Convention. And, in order for this to happen, Obama is going to have to move climate change to the top of his agenda—quickly. As the President himself put it last week, “The time we have to reverse this tide is running out.”

Link:  http://www.newyorker.com/talk/comment/2009/10/05/091005taco_talk_kolbert