From June 6 to 8, the group of the eight wealthiest countries, the G8, will be meeting in Germany, chaired by Chancellor Angela Merkel. Urged on by other European leaders, Merkel wants the G8 to agree to targets and time tables for steep cuts in carbon emissions and increases in energy efficiency.
Hardly had Merkel announced this ambitious agenda when her friend George Bush poured cold water on it. A U.S. statement warned: “The proposals within the sections ‘Fighting Climate Change’ and ‘Carbon markets’ are fundamentally incompatible with the President’s approach to climate change.” To blunt the widespread criticism of his opposition, Mr. Bush proposed meetings of the major greenhouse gas emitting countries this fall. The president of Friends of the Earth called this delaying tactic “a complete charade.”
Most West Europeans are puzzled by the vocal deniers of scientific climate change predictions and by the opposition to mandatory carbon emission reductions in the U.S., a country widely acknowledged as a leader in climate research. Already in 2001, Mr. Bush had refused to sign the 1997 Kyoto Protocols. "I walked away from Kyoto“, he explained, “because it would have damaged the American economy, it would have destroyed the American economy, it was a lousy deal for the American economy." Why it would have been “a lousy deal”, he never explained.
Two years later, U.S. Senator James Inhofe (R-OK), a loyal Bush supporter, declared that “man-made global warming is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people.” Numerous leaders of the energy industry also became highly critical of what they call “the global warming hysteria.” Similar to Mr. Bush, they consider the “science of global warming” highly speculative and claim that constraints on the production and use of carbon fuels will bankrupt the economy.
In stark contrast to the Bush administration, members of Congress have increasingly proposed bills to counteract global warming--from 7 bills in the 105th Congress to 106 in the 109th. Soon after taking office, Speaker Nancy Pelosi created a Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming to deal with the “profound implications for our nation’s economic competitiveness, national security, environmental quality, and public health.”
When Europeans look at the congressional proposals to reduce carbon emissions in the U.S., they cannot help but notice the huge policy differences between Mr. Bush and the majority on Capitol Hill. Like the European Union, many Congressmen want a cap-and-trade system to curb the emission of greenhouse gases.
Since plants can pull heat-trapping carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and store the carbon in their tissue, greenhouse gas emitting industries are asked to offset the carbon dioxide they discharge into the atmosphere by paying for projects that pull carbon out of the atmosphere. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) and Bernie Sanders (I-VT) recently proposed such a measure in the Senate and Henry Waxman (D-CA) introduced it in the House.
When the White House warned Chancellor Merkel that her proposals for mandatory cuts in carbon emissions in the G8 countries “run counter to our overall position,” fifteen chairpersons of House committees wrote President Bush a letter urging him not to weaken the G8 conference declaration on climate control. They added: “The G8 summit should be an opportunity to galvanize international support for addressing this looming threat, not an opportunity to prevent and undermine international action. The leaders of the world’s largest economies must let the rest of the world know that they are serious about addressing the threat posed by global warming and are committed to meaningful action to reduce global warming pollution. U.S. leadership is critical to tackling this global threat.”
If Mr. Bush remains as inflexible on mandatory carbon emissions cuts as he is on ending the U.S. occupation of Iraq, the G8 agenda on environmental protection is likely to go nowhere.