By withdrawing from the Kyoto Protocol--the attempt by 160nations to forge a treaty that will reduce worldwide emissions from coalcombustion and oil burning, thus averting a global-warming catastrophe--PresidentGeorge W. Bush trashed years of work by European negotiators just as he was aboutto make his European diplomatic debut.
By declaring climate science "unsettled" and calling on the National Academyof Sciences (NAS) to review the dire findings of the United Nations-sponsoredIntergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), he made an even greatermiscalculation. For just as domestic attention focused on the infuriatedEuropeans, the NAS reported back that the international panel was, in fact,correct.
The outrage in Europe and Japan over Bush's pullout from the three-year-oldKyoto talks--not to mention the Cheney-Bush energy plan to increase fossil-fuel burning by the world's biggest fuel burner--was loud and nearly unanimous. The thousands of angry demonstrators who greeted Bush in Spain and Sweden mirrored the reaction of European leaders. The Swedish government described the Kyoto withdrawal as appalling and provocative. Other crucial nations were just as clear. Not only Japan and Brazil but also Australia and Canada--coal-rich countries that had both supported U.S. foot-dragging in earlier negotiations--called on Bush to reverse his decision. Even Chinese officials blasted it as "irresponsible." (China's position was put in perspective by a recent New York Times report indicating that the country had cut carbon emissions by 17 percent since 1997, even as its economy grew by 36 percent. By contrast, U.S. emissions have risen by 4.5 percent in the same period though the American economy grew far less.) "This is not just an environmental issue," said British Environment Minister Michael Meacher, summing up the magnitude of Bush's diplomatic trouble. "It's an issue of transatlantic global foreign policy."
A succession of countries have now vowed to pursue the Kyoto goals without theUnited States. It will be a tough haul, since this country is the source of 25percent of the world's carbon emissions and the treaty goes into effect only ifit is ratified by 55 nations whose combined emissions account for at least 55percent of the worldwide total. It will be even tougher if the Bushadministration succeeds in pressuring the Japanese to drop out of the process.But if, as seems likely, the rest of the industrialized world nonetheless goesforward with climate-stabilizing efforts, these will further embarrass andisolate the United States diplomatically--and Bush domestically. Economically,too, we will be left out. As other countries meet emissions goals by deployingmore clean-energy resources, Bush's policies will further cripple America'srenewable-energy industry and, ultimately, turn the United States into consumers,rather than producers, of wind farms, solar systems, and fuel cells.
Meanwhile, regardless of how the Kyoto efforts fare, "the United States nowstands indicted in the court of public opinion as an environmental rogue nation,"according to Phil Clapp, president of the National Environmental Trust, aninfluential advocacy group based in Washington, D.C. Clapp added: "Bush's tripmay turn out to be the landmark loss of America's moral authority around theworld."
The diplomatic debacle, however, could pale in comparison to the politicaldamage at home. A relentless 10-year campaign of disinformation by thefossil-fuel lobby had left many Americans uncertain about the reliability ofclimate science and unmoved by the findings of the UN panel on global warming,even though the ongoing IPCC research, under-taken by 2,000 scientists from 100countries, is the largest, most transparent, and most rigorously peer-reviewedscientific collaboration in history. But when the Cheney-Bush team decided thatthe IPCC suffered from what their Senate point men on the issue called an"internationalist perspective"--when the administration determined that Americansshould trust only the "American science" of the NAS--they made a mistake that mayprove to be their undoing.
The NAS report affirmed that the earth's climate is changing faster than atany time in 10,000 years and that human activities are the cause. Moreover,"American science" also echoed the international panel's concerns about futurefood crises and the very real potential for global warming to transform America'swheat fields into deserts. The NAS even suggested that the international panel,which had predicted a sea rise of up to three feet and temperature increases ofup to 10 degrees Fahrenheit, had understated the catastrophic potential: Bylimiting its projections to the next 100 years, the IPCC "may well underestimatethe magnitude of the eventual impacts," the NAS found. The report, whichgenerated front-page headlines across the country, will likely mark a watershedin American public opinion.
The White House could have saved itself a lot of grief had it done even acursory history check. It would have found, for starters, that about half the scientists on the international panel--and a majority of its lead authors--areAmericans. In fact, back in 1992, despite the lack of definitive evidence at thattime, the NAS had already concluded that "greenhouse warming poses a potentialthreat sufficient to merit prompt response" and advised that "mitigation measuresact as insurance protection against the great uncertainties and the possibilityof dramatic surprises."
But Bush allowed himself to be waltzed into a political dead end by theNeanderthal wing of the fossil-fuel lobby--led by ExxonMobil and the WesternFuels Association--and their paid academic mouthpieces, a group of "greenhouseskeptics" who have long been regarded as laughingstocks in the mainstreamscientific community. (In February the most reckless and widely quoted of them,Dr. S. Fred Singer, declared in a letter to The Washington Post that he had received no oil industry funding for more than 20 years; but ExxonMobil documents reveal that Singer received thousands of dollars from the oil giant as recently as 1998.)
By 1991, Western Fuels and several coal utilities had launched ahalf-million-dollar public-relations campaign to "reposition global warming astheory rather than fact." According to its strategy papers, the campaign wasdesigned to target "older, less-educated men ... [and] young, low-income women"in areas where electricity was derived from coal and, preferably, in districtsthat had a representative on the House Energy Committee.
Following that fraudulent campaign, Western Fuels spent $250,000 on apropaganda video to convince audiences that global warming will actually benefithumanity by increasing crop yields to help feed an expanding population. Thevideo was shown often in the White House during the first Bush presidency(insiders called it the "favorite movie" of John Sununu, George the elder's chiefof staff). Of course, the video overlooked at least two critical factors. Thefirst is bugs: Insects are extremely sensitive to temperature changes-- andscientists agree that as the earth warms, we will see a big increase in thepopulation of crop-destroying, disease-spreading insects. Plant biologists pointout an even more unconscionable omission: While higher carbon dioxide levels inthe earth's atmosphere may temporarily increase plant growth near the ArcticCircle, they will decimate food crops in the tropical regions. Even a half-degreeincrease in the average temperature will cause a big fall in Southeast Asia'srice yields and a 20 percent drop in India's wheat crop. Nonetheless, until now,the fossil-fuel lobby had been extraordinarily successful in maintaining adrumbeat of doubt in the public mind. Far exceeding the reach of traditionalspin, the campaign had very nearly accomplished the privatization of scientifictruth. But with the National Academy's new report, the game is up.
One particularly telling casualty is the most academically respectable of allthe "greenhouse skeptics." Dr. Richard Lindzen of the Massachusetts Institute ofTechnology, one of the 11 authors of the NAS report, has maintained for yearsthat global warming is inherently self-limiting and that its impacts will benegligible. Lindzen has argued that atmospheric water vapor will not amplifywarming, as other scientists assume, because it will naturally dry out at higheraltitudes. But the National Academy concludes that "water vapor feedback ... isexpected to increase" and that the warming trend is "consistent with ... theincrease in upper-air water vapor and rainfall rates over most regions."
In other words, Lindzen--who receives $2,500 a day to consult for coal-and-oilinterests such as Western Fuels, the Australian coal-mining lobby, andOPEC--signed off on a report that essentially rejects his own hypothesis.
Thanks to the NAS report, the American public, already unsettled by the vividevidence of increasing weather extremes, now has permission to accept the grimprojections of mainstream science. And as events unfold, more and more peoplewill make connections between the heating of the atmosphere and events like lastsummer's 64,000 drought-driven wildfires in the western United States; lastyear's record-breaking 84-day drought, which cost farmers in northern Texas $600million; this spring's long drought in the Pacific Northwest, which isintensifying California's power crisis by drying up its seasonal supply ofhydropower; and last month's 35-inch rainfall in Texas, which left 20 dead and $2billion in losses in Houston.
Given the inevitability of increasingly intense floods, droughts, heat waves,and storms--as well as the warming-driven proliferation of infectious diseaseslike West Nile virus and Lyme disease--a public disabused of its scientificdoubts will have much to be angry about. Global warming could do to George W.Bush what the Vietnam War did to Lyndon Johnson 33 years ago--leave him with aprematurely crippled, one-term presidency.
