The opinion of the Mercury News
Hot spot
There is no perfect treaty, but that should not stop the U.S. from doing its part to reduce greenhouse gases
IF the Bush administration really is worried about global warming, as it says, it has done a great job of fooling everyone.
Ignoring or excoriating the United States, 178 countries -- essentially the whole rest of the world -- agreed Monday on rules for reducing the greenhouse gases implicated in global warming.
Rejecting the treaty, the chief U.S. delegate, Paula Dobriansky, proposed no alternatives at the Bonn conference. Her assertion that the United States remains committed to remedying global warming drew boos from the audience.
The rules will implement the Kyoto Protocol, reached in 1997. They aim to reduce, by 2012, greenhouse gas emissions in industrial countries to 5 percent below their 1990 level.
The treaty still must be ratified by countries individually.
The treaty is ``fatally flawed,'' President Bush has asserted, which is half right -- the second half. Of course it is flawed. Global climate science is inexact. How much carbon dioxide do forests absorb, for instance, and how should it be measured? And any worldwide treaty will make compromises offensive to purists. Russia will get credit for closing pollution-belching factories that in fact collapsed along with the Berlin Wall.
None of this should have been a show-stopper for the United States. If there is any treaty about which it is safe to predict a substantial fudge factor in the observance of its rules, this is it.
For industrialized countries to reduce carbon dioxide emissions below 1990 levels will require changes in manufacturing processes and styles of living. As with clean air rules in the United States, exceptions will be made as deadlines arrive and goals remain unmet.
The great benefit of the treaty is the willingness of countries to establish greenhouse gas emissions as one measure of their performance as world citizens.
The Bush administration should have worked from within the group of treaty-affirming nations to adjust rules that are unworkable and to see that developing countries, such as India and China, get a break but not a free ride.
It should have recognized that the treaty contains the sort of free-market solutions, such as tradable pollution-reduction credits, that permit flexibility and economic efficiency in cutting emissions.
It should have acknowledged the reason other countries are pointing their fingers at the United States. With 5 percent of the world's population, the United States produces 25 percent of the world's greenhouse gases. With its engineering prowess, it ought to be providing green technology for itself and the developing world.
Most of all, it should have adopted the approach of a Belgian diplomat, Olivier Deleuze, who said, ``I prefer an imperfect agreement that is living than a perfect agreement that doesn't exist.'' |
