On The Sidelines: 

Withdrawing from the climate talks 
is more harmful to the United States 
than to the Kyoto Treaty 

ANITA SPIESS &ALDEN MEYER Nucleus Fall01

In July, the world finally got serious about global warming. At Bonn, industrialized nations agreed on the basic framework of an internationally binding regime to control carbon and other gases that cause global warming.

It was a surprising step. In March, the Bush administration pulled the United States out of the negotiations, claiming that the Kyoto Protocol was "fatally flawed." For a while, it looked like the treaty was doomed. Could Japan, Canada, and Australia be persuaded to break with the US?

The European Union took the lead on answering developing countries' concerns about the effect of the US pullout on financial and technology assistance. Together with some other industrialized countries, the EU pulled together a financial package, promising about $450 million a year starting in 2005 to help developing countries adapt to climate change and continue industrialization without adding substantially to global warming.

The president of the negotiations, Jan Pronk, who is the environment minister of the Netherlands, put together a compromise package and

persuaded the EU, some smaller groups of industrial countries, and the developing countries to accept it unchanged. This put pressure on Japan, Australia, Russia, and Canada to follow suit. In the end, they went along. None of them wanted to be seen as having brought down a treaty that the rest of the world wanted.

Ironically, the US contributed to the treaty's success. The Bush administration had asked that the negotiations be postponed from May to July. As a result, they came at the same time as the G8 summit in Genoa and just before Japan's elections. This made it

easier for leaders to meet and discuss their course, then instruct their delegates that they wanted a deal. And Japan proved vulnerable to pressure in Bonn, in Genoa, and at home.

The United States is likely to find that its economy suffers from refusing to participate in the Kyoto Protocol. As Europe and Japan show that they can decrease their greenhouse-gas emissions in a cost-effective way, old arguments about economic bankruptcy and disaster will sound increasingly hollow. Because America is not a party to the treaty, US companies will be at a competitive disadvantage in the market for fuel cells, wind turbines, advanced power plants, hybrid vehicles, and other carbon-saving technologies that are in increasing demand. European and Japanese companies will be able to gain carbon credits for sales to Russia, Eastern Europe, or the developing world, reducing the effective cost of their products.

Furthermore, parties to the treaty are likely to impose tariffs on US products that are energy intensive, such as steel and cars, in order to neutralize any US advantage from cheaper energy. They may also try to get a world trade body to rule that some sanctions against US products are appropriate because the nation is not complying with international environmental norms.

President Bush has put himself in an odd position. He has said that he thinks global warming is a serious problem and that he wants to do

something serious about it. Since he's taken the country out of the international treaty, the US can no longer get credit for decreasing carbon emissions abroad. To do something serious, he has no choice but to act domestically. And that's what environmental groups and the EU have advocated all along. Thus, he's created more pressure for domestic action than would have been the case if he'd accepted the treaty.

Serious action on global warming will require reducing carbon and other greenhouse-gas emissions from our vehicles and power plants. We'll need to enact and implement higher fuel economy standards for cars and light trucks, binding caps on carbon dioxide emissions from power plants, and requirements that a steadily increasing share of our electricity derive from renewable sources such as wind, biomass, and solar energy. There is bipartisan support in Congress for these initiatives and growing public awareness of the need for the US to clean up its act at home.

Over the next few years, UCS will be working to get Congress to pass policies that will limit domestic carbon emissions. We'll build on the partnerships we've launched with the scientific, business, and religious communities, helping them put pressure on Congress to act. [See `7n Good Company, "p. 8.J We'll be working in key states, both to increase public understanding of the problem of climate

change and to build a much larger base of support for action. Upcoming studies of the impact of climate change on two key regions-the Gulf Coast and Great Lakes and followup work with the media and policymakers in these regions will be key elements of our strategy. In addition, we'll provide ongoing analysis on the feasibility of renewable energy, increased vehicle fuel economy, and various forms of carbon sequestration, while working to enact state policies that will provide useful precedents for the nation as a whole.

The meeting in Bonn set the stage for the treaty's completion. The negotiators met again in October in Marrakesh to formally adopt specific rules for implementation and consequences for noncompliance. This clears the way for the European countries, Japan, Canada, Australia, Russia, and others to ratify the Kyoto Protocol, so that it can enter into force by the September 2002 Earth Summit in Johannesburg.

As the rest of the world moves to implement their commitments under Kyoto, pressure will build on the United States to rejoin the Kyoto process. But it seems unlikely that President Bush will reverse his decision to pull the US out, given the vehement opposition to Kyoto among the right wing of the Republican party. So for now, the US will remain on the sidelines.