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Global View
Scrapping Kyoto May Prove
To Be Bush's Finest Act
By GEORGE MELLOAN
Something akin to mass hysteria has erupted in certain circles over George Bush's announcement last week that the U.S. will not support the Kyoto protocols designed to defend us all against "global warming." His reason was that the United Nations plan could put a sputtering U.S. economy into the tank. He could have added a second reason: There is no plausible evidence that a significant global-warming trend exists.
The scientific argument on this issue ended, for all practical purposes, somewhere in the mid-1990s. The scientists on the U.N.'s own Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) were so skeptical in a 1996 draft report that their political betters chose to censor them. The pols substituted gobbledygook for the scientists' admission that they could find no clear evidence of a link between temperature change and greenhouse gases. Dr. Frederick Seitz, former head of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, fumed that he had never seen "a more disturbing corruption of the peer review process . . ."
By the year 2000, "global warming" had become a joke in America, finding its way into cartoons and the repertoires of late-night jokesters. Al Gore, one of the original "global warming" Chicken Littles, didn't choose to stress his role in producing the Kyoto protocols during his presidential campaign. Obviously, enviroscares were losing some of their sex appeal as more and more Americans began to wonder what was so bad about warmer weather. They would wonder even more when one of the coldest winters on record descended on the Northeast, piling up five-foot snow banks.
But the Kyoto juggernaut just kept on rolling in other parts of the world. German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, a White House visitor last week, professed shock at the Bush announcement. He, after all, is in a coalition with the Greens, who already are losing favor with German voters. French President Jacques Chirac is trying to fend off a scandal investigation in Paris and no doubt hoped to get some Green support by calling the Bush statement "disturbing and unacceptable."
What's causing all of this deep concern among politicians is not the fear that the earth will be incinerated next July, but the prospect that the "environmental movement" may finally be fizzling out as a political constituency. It has made itself a powerful political force by stirring up public fears of mostly imaginary dangers, such as global warming or genetically modified organisms (GMOs). The U.N. got by in the 1980s with the costly and scientifically dubious Montreal Protocol, which outlawed Freon as a threat to the ozone layer. Enviros pretty much killed off nuclear energy with regulatory delays that forced up the cost of new construction. But Kyoto may have been a bridge too far.
One of the many problems with Kyoto is that it targeted Mother Nature herself. In some theoretical models, it was alleged that increasingly abundant "greenhouse" gases, principally carbon dioxide and methane, would trap heat and raise the temperature on earth. It was thus deduced that industrial emissions of "greenhouse gases" must be regulated and somehow curtailed.
The first problem with this theory was that there was no empirical evidence to support it. Measuring the temperature of the earth is no easy matter, but measurements showed that most of the barely noticeable temperature rise of the past 100 years occurred before 1940, when the globe was far less industrialized than today. Serious scientists also pointed out that the greenhouse gases are a fundamental part of the biosphere, necessary to all life, and that industrial activity generates less than 5% of them, if that.
Despite all the scientific doubts, the U.N. political bandwagon rolled on toward the goal of taxing carbon-dioxide emissions. Developing countries got an exemption because of their quite plausible claim that a carbon tax would retard their development. A system of tradable permits was proposed so that countries that have suffered industrial decline, like Russia, could sell emission rights to industries with emissions over the target limits. No one has figured out how to make this ill-defined scheme work, but there already is a budding market in "emission rights" in Europe, as alert traders sense there might be money in the U.N.'s folly.
What stopped George Bush and Congress was the estimate of what the U.N. project would cost the U.S. Al Gore agreed at Kyoto in 1997 that by 2012 the U.S. would reduce its carbon emissions to 7% below 1990 levels. The only way to cut carbon-dioxide emissions is to replace carbon-intensive fuels, which rules out cheap fuels, like coal. The U.S. Department of Energy estimated that implementation of the Gore promise would have meant a $397 billion lower gross national product in 2010 than if the U.S. opted out. Kyoto would boost electricity prices by 86.4% and other energy costs accordingly.
Mr. Bush no doubt concluded that an American president would be out of his mind to commit to something like this while the economy is slowing and California is starving itself to death with price controls on electric energy. Besides, all the American enviros had voted for Al Gore or, more likely, the man who is responsible for a lot of this nonsense, Ralph Nader.
One of the delightful things about the American economy, of course, is its ability to absorb shocks through its sheer size and adaptability. Kyoto has had one salutary effect, reviving interest in nuclear power. Despite all the abuse it has taken from the Naderites, nuclear power had its best year ever in 2000. No new plants were built but owners have been recommissioning existing plants and upgrading their generating capacity with new equipment and instruments. Nukes don't create carbon. They would be an attractive source of power even if Kyoto didn't exist, because of their cleanliness and relative safety.
One reason for the shock at the Bush announcement is the perception by the enviro-scaremongers that the old magic has stopped working. Without the U.S. on board, Kyoto will become a worthless relic. What will all the people who worked to put it together do then? Invent another global threat? A lot of careers are wrapped up in this treaty and a lot of hopes for bureaucratic jobs that would be created trying to make the nightmare of tradable permits work.
Think of the power of having the whole world dancing to a U.N. tune! All lost. George Bush may well have had his finest hour last week when he summoned up the courage to tell other national leaders that they have been on a fool's errand.
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