Efforts to curb world climate change will get nowhere until China and India fall in line
By ERIC MARGOLIS
Who would have thought weather, that most banal of subjects, would become intensely politicized and a subject of furious debate?
World leaders grandstanding at the G-8 summit in a heavily guarded German Baltic resort spent much of their time trying to hammer out agreement on how to deal with global warming. They pretty much failed, papering over deep differences with the usual post-summit platitudes.
G-8 members represent 63% of world economic activity and produce much of the carbon pollution causing global warming. In Europe, glaciers are melting and summers increasingly torrid.
MERKEL UNDER PRESSURE
Germany's chancellor, Angela Merkel, is under voter pressure to achieve long-term targets for reducing greenhouse gases. Global warming has become the European Union's most important political issue. The EU leads the world in enlightened environmental policies and effective emission controls.
Enter President George W. Bush. Until lately he dismissed scientists' warnings of global warming as false alarms from "tree huggers." But faced by American's fast growing concern over global warming, Bush and fellow Republicans had to do something. So Bush just offered a nebulous plan designed to placate voters by urging yet more studies and talks. His real agenda was to stave off the original Kyoto accord.
Meanwhile, the White House ignited a major fracas with Moscow over Bush's daft plan to implant anti-missile defences in Central Europe against non-existent Iranian missiles.
Conjuring up Cold War rivalries with Russia is a way to divert Americans from Bush's debacle in Iraq and rekindle patriotic support for sinking Republicans. On cue, Vladi Putin reacted with predictable fury and threats to Washington's challenge.
Still, President Bush is right about one thing. No environmental accords make sense without inclusion of China and India.
China is due to build 240 coal-fired power plants. India refuses to take serious action to control its growing pollution. Indonesia has become the world's third largest carbon producer after the U.S. and China. Each spring the criminal burning of its Borneo forests blankets South Asia in a miasma of smog.
"You polluted the atmosphere for the last 150 years during your industrial revolutions," Third World emitters scold the developed world, "now it's our turn." Not so.
A mere two and a half centuries ago, people considered it normal to throw their garbage and human waste out the window into the street. Herds of pigs were occasionally brought in to eat the refuse. Cholera, typhoid and a legion of other diseases resulted.
Until recently, most of us thought it proper to dispose of our industrial waste by pumping it into the atmosphere we breathe. In recent years, however, a new, international awareness has developed that dumping filth into the air is as dangerous and uncivilized as throwing feces into the street.
EUROPEANS FURIOUS
Europeans are furious at the Bush Administration for its persistent efforts to derail plans to reduce carbon emissions. But Bush, as usual, is playing to his core Republican supporters.
Vice-President Dick Cheney's hunting pals in Fortune 500 companies bitterly oppose costly emission controls and efforts to save forests and wildlife. Many Conservative Republicans think hunting -- the act of slaughtering defenceless animals -- and pillaging nature as somehow manly. They believe efforts to protect the environment are a sinister leftist plot.
Many Bush supporters on America's loopy Christian far right believe the world is about to be destroyed in Armageddon, so there's no need to conserve air, water, trees or anything else.
China, India and Indonesia, rushing headlong to industrialize, couldn't care less. They refuse to take meaningful action.
We understand their desire to industrialize and end poverty. But earth faces an emergency. If the G-8 won't take effective action, consumers worldwide can. Boycotting products from nations that refuse to stop polluting our air would force them to begin enforcing emission controls and implementing new clean air technology.
Consumers of the world, unite!
http://www.torontosun.com/News/Columnists/Margolis_Eric/2007/06/10/4249045-sun.html
By ERIC MARGOLIS
Who would have thought weather, that most banal of subjects, would become intensely politicized and a subject of furious debate?
World leaders grandstanding at the G-8 summit in a heavily guarded German Baltic resort spent much of their time trying to hammer out agreement on how to deal with global warming. They pretty much failed, papering over deep differences with the usual post-summit platitudes.
G-8 members represent 63% of world economic activity and produce much of the carbon pollution causing global warming. In Europe, glaciers are melting and summers increasingly torrid.
MERKEL UNDER PRESSURE
Germany's chancellor, Angela Merkel, is under voter pressure to achieve long-term targets for reducing greenhouse gases. Global warming has become the European Union's most important political issue. The EU leads the world in enlightened environmental policies and effective emission controls.
Enter President George W. Bush. Until lately he dismissed scientists' warnings of global warming as false alarms from "tree huggers." But faced by American's fast growing concern over global warming, Bush and fellow Republicans had to do something. So Bush just offered a nebulous plan designed to placate voters by urging yet more studies and talks. His real agenda was to stave off the original Kyoto accord.
Meanwhile, the White House ignited a major fracas with Moscow over Bush's daft plan to implant anti-missile defences in Central Europe against non-existent Iranian missiles.
Conjuring up Cold War rivalries with Russia is a way to divert Americans from Bush's debacle in Iraq and rekindle patriotic support for sinking Republicans. On cue, Vladi Putin reacted with predictable fury and threats to Washington's challenge.
Still, President Bush is right about one thing. No environmental accords make sense without inclusion of China and India.
China is due to build 240 coal-fired power plants. India refuses to take serious action to control its growing pollution. Indonesia has become the world's third largest carbon producer after the U.S. and China. Each spring the criminal burning of its Borneo forests blankets South Asia in a miasma of smog.
"You polluted the atmosphere for the last 150 years during your industrial revolutions," Third World emitters scold the developed world, "now it's our turn." Not so.
A mere two and a half centuries ago, people considered it normal to throw their garbage and human waste out the window into the street. Herds of pigs were occasionally brought in to eat the refuse. Cholera, typhoid and a legion of other diseases resulted.
Until recently, most of us thought it proper to dispose of our industrial waste by pumping it into the atmosphere we breathe. In recent years, however, a new, international awareness has developed that dumping filth into the air is as dangerous and uncivilized as throwing feces into the street.
EUROPEANS FURIOUS
Europeans are furious at the Bush Administration for its persistent efforts to derail plans to reduce carbon emissions. But Bush, as usual, is playing to his core Republican supporters.
Vice-President Dick Cheney's hunting pals in Fortune 500 companies bitterly oppose costly emission controls and efforts to save forests and wildlife. Many Conservative Republicans think hunting -- the act of slaughtering defenceless animals -- and pillaging nature as somehow manly. They believe efforts to protect the environment are a sinister leftist plot.
Many Bush supporters on America's loopy Christian far right believe the world is about to be destroyed in Armageddon, so there's no need to conserve air, water, trees or anything else.
China, India and Indonesia, rushing headlong to industrialize, couldn't care less. They refuse to take meaningful action.
We understand their desire to industrialize and end poverty. But earth faces an emergency. If the G-8 won't take effective action, consumers worldwide can. Boycotting products from nations that refuse to stop polluting our air would force them to begin enforcing emission controls and implementing new clean air technology.
Consumers of the world, unite!
http://www.torontosun.com/News/Columnists/Margolis_Eric/2007/06/10/4249045-sun.html
