I've been to climate meetings in locales that stretch from Kyoto to The Hague, Mexico City to the Maldives. It would have been awfully easy to get in the old hybrid and drive two hours north to Montreal for the big climate-change confab that wrapped up this weekend -- if nothing else, it's a city I love deeply. But I couldn't bring myself to do it in the end. I knew it was going to be too painful to watch.
Do U.S. see what I see?
Photo: iStockphoto.
Too painful because, as it has since the issue first emerged, the United States was the one blocking progress. Thirteen long years ago, in 1992, as he was setting out for the Rio de Janeiro summit that launched the international negotiations on global warming, the first President Bush announced that he might be willing to talk about such things, but "the American way of life is not up for negotiation." That was tragedy; by now it's descended into farce. Our representative -- yours and mine, the person speaking for the country of Thoreau and Muir and Carson and Brower -- is a man named Harlan Watson. If he had merely spent his time explaining why America would never join the Kyoto Protocol, that would have been one thing -- our non-participation has been a given ever since Bill Clinton and Al Gore decided it wasn't worth staking any political capital on. But instead, he's concentrated his efforts on making sure that there won't be constructive talks about what comes after Kyoto when it expires in 2012. In effect, he's trying to make sure that the second George Bush's refusal to countenance any discussion of limiting carbon in the atmosphere lasts long after his term in office finally, blessedly drags to an end. Even then, they've succeeded in setting the bar so incredibly low that the most dismal deal -- some Kyoto-lite exemption-filled utility-blessed legislation -- will seem like manna, and we will eat it up.
Too painful because in the process this same Harlan Watson has demonstrated once more the corporate headlock on our government. How did our representative get his job? We now know, because of a fax that was sent in February of 2001, two weeks after Bush's first inauguration, from the "senior environmental adviser" at ExxonMobil to the White House. This adviser outlines a number of steps the White House should take immediately, including engineering the firing of a scientist named Robert Watson (no relation to Harlan, in many, many ways) as the head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. It also recommends transferring Harlan from his work under House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) to the climate-change team. And of course, this is what happened. Did this revelation shame ExxonMobil? It did not. A spokesperson said, "As the largest energy company in the U.S., [we are] frequently asked by government officials to comment on substantive issues. We take that responsibility seriously." And did this revelation startle anyone else? No, of course it didn't. Five years into the Bush administration, we all but take it for granted that this is how it works.
Too painful because these are the years when we desperately need to be making progress. Eventually even we will have no choice but to start doing something about climate change. But each new issue of Science and Nature makes it clear that the important time is now -- that the climatic tipping point is nearer than we thought. More to the point, each passing year brings China and India further along their development path, using precisely the same raw material -- coal -- that we used to build our wealth. Five years ago, with incredible effort and investment, we might have nudged that trajectory in a very different direction; but last year, China added 65 gigawatts to its electric grid, twice as much as all of New England. And as that happens, the U.S. and China become each other's perfect excuse for inaction. "We won't do anything until China does." "How can we be expected to do anything if the U.S. won't even act?" Carbon dependent and co-dependent.
Too painful, finally, because there are so many fine young people who have worked so hard. A few weeks before Montreal, I went to a gathering of 50 or 60 students at Middlebury College near my home. They call themselves the Sunday Night Group, and they get together (on Sunday nights!) to work on climate change. Some of them work on organizing at churches, and some of them work on handing out compact fluorescent bulbs, and some of them work on biomass boilers, and on and on. They are tireless, devoted, and far less ego-driven than the student organizers of my college days. And there are more like them on campuses around the continent -- a loose-knit group called Energy Action has emerged as their umbrella. It's the most impressive engagement by young people with environmental issues since the first Earth Day. It's just that they have the bad luck to be coming of age at the moment when environmentalism -- an American invention, our great gift to the modern world -- has become painfully difficult work in this country. America is not the engine of environmental progress. It's not even the caboose. It's the anchor hanging off the caboose. And it is painful, damn it, to see those young people run head-on into all of that.
But run they did, and powerfully. Before the conference ended, they'd joined with students from around the continent to march in the largest rally yet against global warming. They'd serenaded conference delegates and handed out cans of Spam and lifejackets ("climate-change survival packs"). They'd networked and Palm-Piloted and built organization. They'd let Harlan Exxon Watson know that they knew he was the lamest sort of tool. I kind of wish I'd been there to see it. I guess next time I'll have to go.
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Comments
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mtneuman Posted 7:50 am
12 Dec 2005
Anti global warming stalwart Bill McKibben appears to be taking 1960's writer Timothy Leary's famous quote seriously:
"If you take the game of life seriously, if you take your nervous system seriously, if you take your sense organs seriously, if you take the energy process seriously, you must turn on, tune in, and drop out".
Please get up, Bill. We need you now more than ever.
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Hans Noeldner Posted 1:15 am
14 Dec 2005
There is only one way we can convince our political leaders that we are serious, and it ain't street protests or petitions or bumper stickers or elections. Washington pays attention to money, and right now oil companies are the high bidders. And these companies are flush with cash because you and I and our families and friends and neighbors have willingly enriched them.
What to do about it? Stay away from the gas pumps and slash our fuel consumption. (Hello!). That means walking, biking, using public transit, living closer together, and living frugally. We are utterly free to do all these things right now; we are utterly free to enroll others in the effort; we don't need any laws or new technology or government programs to get our butts in gear. The thing we DO need is to believe our own actions matter. Then we must commit ourselves to transforming our fellow countrymen.
Is it going to hurt the economy when we stop building single-family suburban homes and buying snowmobiles and flying to Colorado and Disney World for amusement? Unfortunately the answer is "Yes". After a fossil-fuel binge that lasted a century, our addiction is severe. Overcoming this unhealthy, profoundly endemic dependence may be one of the greatest challenges our nation has every faced.
Addicts always begin with denial and shifting blame. Can we take the next step? God have mercy on our heirs if we cannot.
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mtneuman Posted 6:48 am
14 Dec 2005
Government needs to develop new programs that will encourage people to conserve energy. Financial incentives (rebates) to encourage less driving, flying and home energy use - funded by increases in fuel taxes. The incentives have to be high enough to make it worthwhile for people to change to a less energy intensive way of living.
How you get government officials to implement the changes is the hard part.
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Hans Noeldner Posted 2:41 am
16 Dec 2005
Government WILL NOT ACT until a critical mass of citizens walk the talk. Elected leaders will never clamp down on fossil fuel use when over 50% of the voting public continues to increase consumption. We vote for national leaders every four years on average. Most of us vote at least once per week at gasoline stations. It is obvious which votes prevail.
And remember "It's the economy, stupid!"? Economic downturns are the number one reason why incumbents loose. Economic growth has NEVER occured in our nation without increased energy consumption. Politicians know that advocating reduced consumption is suicide right now.
President Bush is a perfect reflection of we-the-people -- including his lies about why we just happen to have clustered our armed forces around the world's greatest remaining oil reserves. If we don't like the reflection, we'd better transform the source instead of blaming the mirror.
Is it hopeless to change the behavior and lifestyles of a hundred million Americans? Probably. But to what more worthy fight could we devote our lives?
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ben1364 Posted 12:29 am
02 Feb 2006
The Wall Street Journal ran an interesting story on Jnuary 19, 2006 addressing this issue in some detail entitled "Kyoto's Big Con." I commend it to you.
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