Go-by to global warming

The more the Bush team talks about sound environmental policies, the more exposed it is getting on the shallow grounds it is treading, finds Sridhar Krishnaswami.

THE CONSERVATIVES and the business houses are simply elated at the thinking of the White House under a Republican President. But, on the other side of the fence, environmentalists and liberals are railing at the administration for backtracking on the Kyoto Treaty reducing greenhouse gas emissions. And the more the Bush team talks about sound environmental policies, the more exposed it is getting on the shallow grounds it is treading.

The final word on the Kyoto Treaty has not been said, but much will depend on the kind of moves this conservative administration is going to make between now and July. The kind of participation in the meetings set for this month in New York and later on in Bonn this summer will be an indication whether Washington is putting the finishing touches on walking away from Kyoto.

It is not just the Greens, the environmentalists and the liberal Democrats who are appalled at what has come out of the Environmental Protection Agency in the last two weeks. ``... we have no interest in implementing that treaty'', Ms. Christine Todd Whitman, Administrator of the EPA, remarked, even as officials in the department were quick to say that their boss did not speak of the treaty being ``dead''. But the general consensus has been that for all practical purposes, the Kyoto Treaty is indeed dead.

One argument has been made that the rationale for not pursuing with the Kyoto Treaty is not the science behind global warming or the President's lack of sensitivity to the issues behind it. Rather it is a political one - the Bush administration has no interest because there is no stomach for the Kyoto Protocol on Capitol Hill.

The other view is something that has not been well developed - that Ms. Whitman who was applauded by Republican moderates on being appointed to the EPA is finding herself at the receiving end from the more hardline Conservatives in the party. And the Kyoto Treaty must just be the starting point.

There has been the argument in the administration and conservative circles that aside from the fact that key developing nations have been left out of the Kyoto Treaty and process, not a single industrialised country has ratified the pact. And the U.S. is not going to be the first by any stretch of imagination. But critics have been making the point that the Bush administration is walking away from the treaty without even proposing changes which could then be negotiated.

It is not as though the U.S. under a conservative administration does not understand the significance of the Kyoto Treaty. Signed by the previous Democratic administration but one that could not be shepherded legislatively in the last term of Mr. Bill Clinton, the Kyoto pact is seen internationally as one of the first serious efforts to come to grips with global warming. It calls on the U.S. and other industrialised nations to cut emissions of heat trapping gases between 5 and 7 per cent below 1990 levels by the year 2012.

It was not just Ms. Whitman who set the ball rolling for, earlier, the President, Mr. George W. Bush, excused himself out of a campaign promise to cut carbon dioxide emissions, seen as ``the'' culprit by scientists as the main greenhouse gas.

The U.S. emits the largest quantity of carbon dioxide gas in the world, accounting for as much as 25 per cent of the world total.

Mr. Bush argued that the energy crisis in the U.S. had made him re-think the campaign pledge;and the White House argued that placing restrictions on power plants over carbon dioxide emissions would be costly to the American economy and therefore to the consumer. Hence, in the name of national interest - read American interest - the Bush administration delivered its knockout punch.

The Europeans have been taken aback at the decision - or the lack of a clear decision - by the Bush administration; but for the moment their entreaties are getting nowhere. The Europeans have basically told the Americans that they will be pursuing the Kyoto process, leaving the door open for the Republican administration to get into it as well. But even European officials who have met senior officials of the Bush administration are not quite sure as to where the present administration stands on the issue.

``They do not have any concrete alternatives or options for the moment,'' the European Union's Environment Commissioner commented recently; and there is the feeling both in this country and overseas that the Kyoto Treaty and other aspects of Mr. Bush's environmental stance will become major foreign policy challenges of the administration in the months to come.

Walking away from the Kyoto Treaty and in general placing a lower premium on environmental issues have domestic implications as well; and one that will be played out in the Congressional elections of 2002 and the Presidential elections of 2004. As it is, Republicans who come from environmentally friendly states are at a loss to explain the actions of their President.And the Democrats are gloating over the fact that they may have just placed their hands on a winning issue down the road.

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