Sometimes, graphs are worth a thousand words.
The following graph illustrates why the U.S. ratification of the Kyoto Treaty would have been so important:
The graph is linked to an article on climate change and worldwide carbon emissions. An excerpt:
The US emits more, absolutely and per head, than any other country - although it also produces more wealth. When Kyoto was agreed, the US signed and committed to reducing its emissions by 6%. But since then it has pulled out of the agreement and its carbon dioxide emissions have increased to more than 15% above 1990 levels.For the agreement to become a legally binding treaty, it must be ratified by countries which together were responsible for a at least 55% of the total 1990 emissions reported by the industrialised countries and emerging economies which made commitments to reduce their emissions under the protocol.
As the US accounted for 36.1% of those emissions, this 55% target is much harder to achieve without its participation.
(Emphasis added)
All of the Bush administration's hand-waving regarding their reasons for not signing the Kyoto Treaty can essentially be reduced to two things: big oil and big coal.
An article by environmentalist and writer Bill McKibben sums up how the "big oil" lobby twisted climate change science and journalism to suit their interests.
Continued below the fold.
McKibben's article begins with his description of the moment the Kyoto Treaty was finalized:
Finally, from behind the closed doors, word emerged that we had a treaty. The greens all cheered, halfheartedly—since it wasn't as though the agreement would go anywhere near far enough to arrest global warming—but firm in their conviction that the tide on the issue had finally turned. After a decade of resistance, the oil companies and the car companies and all the other deniers of global warming had seen their power matched.Or so it seemed. I was standing next to a top industry lobbyist, a man who had spent the last week engineering opposition to the treaty, huddling with Exxon lawyers and Saudi delegates, detailing the Venezuelans to change this word, the Kuwaitis to soften that number. Right now he looked just plain tired. "I can't wait to get back to Washington," he said. "In Washington we'll get this under control again."
[snip]
In Washington... the lobbyists did get things "under control." Eight years after Kyoto, Big Oil and Big Coal remain in complete and unchallenged power. Around the country, according to industry analysts, 68 new coal-fired power plants are in various stages of planning. Detroit makes cars that burn more fuel, on average, than at any time in the last two decades.
He makes the point that it's incredibly hard for the U.S. to make the shift to non-fossile fuel energy sources, especially when those invested in the oil and coal industries don't want things to change:
What makes the battle harder still is the tangibility gap between benefits and costs. Everyone is, in the long run, better off if the planet doesn't burn to a crisp. But in any given year the payoff for shifting away from fossil fuel is incremental and essentially invisible. The costs, however, are concentrated: If you own a coal mine, an oil well, or an assembly line churning out gas-guzzlers, you have a very strong incentive for making sure no one starts charging you for emitting carbon.At the very least, the "energy sector" needed to stall for time, so that its investments in oil fields and the like could keep on earning for their theoretical lifetimes. The strategy turned out to be simple: Cloud the issue as much as possible so that voters, already none too eager to embrace higher gas prices, would have no real reason to move climate change to the top of their agendas. I mean, if the scientists aren't absolutely certain, well, why not just wait until they get it sorted out?
The part of the last paragraph I've emphasized in bold is the crux of McKibben's argument. Confuse people... and what's the best way to do this?
That's right, you hijack the media:
The tactic worked brilliantly; throughout the 1990s, even as other nations took action, the fossil fuel industry's Global Climate Coalition managed to make American journalists treat the accelerating warming as a he-said-she-said story. True, a vast scientific consensus was forming that climate change threatens the earth more profoundly than anything since the dawn of civilization, but in an Associated Press dispatch the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change didn't look all that much more impressive than, say, Patrick Michaels of the Cato Institute or S. Fred Singer, former chief scientist at the U.S. Department of Transportation. Michaels and Singer weren't really doing new research, just tossing jabs at those who were, but that didn't matter. Their task was not to build a new climate model; it was to provide cover for politicians who were only too happy to duck the issue. Their task was to keep things under control.It was all incredibly crude. But it was also incredibly effective. For now and for the foreseeable future, the climate skeptics have carried the day. They've understood the shape of American politics far better than environmentalists. They know that it doesn't matter how many scientists are arrayed against you as long as you can intimidate newspapers into giving you equal time. They understand, too, that playing defense is all they need to do: Given the inertia inherent in the economy, it's more than sufficient to simply instill doubt.
(Note: judging by their website, it appears that the Global Climate Coalition is satisfied that they've done their job, as they have been "deactivated".)
It sounds all too familiar, this manipulation of the media in order to brainwash Americans into believing pseudoscience, pseudoeconomics, or anything else the Bush administration wants to undermine.
Whatever the area of science is, if it threatens GOP special interests, it's in danger.
Great work on this meta-issue. Everyone should read the recent 3 part New Yorker series on global warming, especially the final one, where they talk about what can be done.
It's going to be very, very, very hard to do everything we need to do to have a chance at holding the line on climate change, and the case for the centrality of the U.S. and its complicity for not participating in Kyoto is made clear. Bottom line: The longer we wait, the harder it gets. If we have another decade of full anti-compliance political control (i.e. the hard right), even an optimist like me will lose it. That could be decisive, if waiting out these last 10 years hasn't already been decisive -- time will tell.
Just wait till the costs of building dykes all along the East Coast and dealing with refugee crises and resource wars in the developing world. Iraq will seem cheap.
Posted by: Crab Nebula | May 13, 2005 at 10:34