A lot of the politics around this issue seem to include controlling the capitalist system in America, responsible for our remaining the single most attractive place for the people of the world to migrate to and invest in.
Bali Who?
Under cover of fighting global warming, developing countries try to slow America's economy.
BY PETE DU PONT
Wednesday, December 19, 2007 12:01 a.m. EST
Ten years ago, as the 1997 Kyoto Agreement was about to be signed, the Senate on a 95-0 vote passed a resolution stating that the United States should not be a signatory to any Climate Change or Kyoto negotiations that "mandate new commitments to limit or reduce greenhouse gas emissions for the Annex I Parties"--then 37 industrial nations--"unless the protocol or other agreement also mandates new specific scheduled commitments to limit or reduce greenhouse gas emissions for Developing Country Parties."
The senators understood that exempting developing countries like China, India and Brazil from mandates against global warming was a mistake, for warming was a global not just a Western matter. More important, the senators understood that the underlying argument was less about global warming than about economic growth.
Developing nations don't want to be limited in any way, and they do want to slow down the economic growth of developed nations so they can gain economically.
Fast forward to the just-concluded global environment conference in Bali, and the discussion had much the same theme. On the surface it was about global warming, but in reality it was as much about mandating an international agreement that would slow economic growth in developed nations.
The developing country parties still believe they must be exempted from a requirement to reduce global warming. The G77 Group (150 developing nations) said they were not ready to cut emissions from fossil fuels to fight climate change. India argued that it should receive compensation for protecting its forests rather than having to pledge to reduce emissions.
China is vastly expanding its factories and power plants--it is building another coal-fired power plant every seven to 10 days--and so opposed emission targets that would bind it. As the New York Times reported a year ago, China now "uses more coal than the United States, the European Union and Japan combined," and so "the increase in global warming gases from China's coal use will probably exceed that for all industrialized countries combined over the next 25 years." China is already home to 20 of the world's 30 most polluted cities, but Su Wei, China's top climate expert in Bali, said the burden of reducing global warming pollution is one that belongs to the wealthy, not China.
Developing countries nevertheless signed on to the Bali Action Plan, agreeing that with financial and technical help from developed nations they would consider "nationally appropriate mitigation actions"--not "commitments or actions" as developed countries had to agree to--to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions.
What they did not get was the binding emission reductions for developed nations that the European and United Nations delegates sought: emission cuts 40% below 1990 levels by 2020, and 50% by 2050. That disappointed the anti-American Bali establishment--the Papua New Guinea climate change ambassador said, "If you cannot lead, leave it to the rest of us. Get out of the way." American environmentalists weren't happy either. Hans Verlome of the World Wildlife Fund remarked that we had "lost substance" in removing the emission reduction requirements for developed nations.
But America's Bali delegation, understanding that economic limitations were more significant to nations than environmental ones, succeeded in getting rid of the Bali-favored emission standards that would limit America's--but not developing nations'--economic growth.
