Even though I still plan to attend the UN Global Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen this December, I don’t really expect any effective agreement to cut carbon emissions to result from it. And even without the current recession, the situation would be the same. Why am I so pessimistic? Sadly, it’s because I feel the lack of leadership among our politicians on this issue merely reflects the indifferent attitudes of the people at large.
The reality of politics around the globe is that truly gifted political leaders like Barack Obama – with the ability to inspire people and marshal popular support for economically painful solutions to their countries’ problems – only come along once in a generation. The rest of the time we tend to have leaders who attain their positions by manipulating popular opinion. They aren’t inspiring, natural leaders.
But for the most part, even the most gifted leaders must still be able to deal effectively with opposition to their policies –from the public, or other interests – if they want to maintain their position. President Obama is no exception.
As gifted a leader he is, and with all the popular support he enjoys, he still has to grapple with winning the legislative support of Democrats in Congress for his policies. Those legislators are worried about their prospects for re-election if their constituents, or the business and social elites who fund their campaigns, decide they don’t like those policies.
As a result, the climate change bill that barely squeaked through Congress at the end of June was at best a very weak prescription for an ailment that is rapidly worsening. The good news is that Congress finally agreed to cut America’s carbon emissions, but the bad news is that America will only cut them by 17 per cent by the year 2020. However, as weak as this bill is, I can’t understand why Greenpeace actually came out against it. It has only taken the US Congress 20 years to get to the point where it’s finally willing to play ball and cut America’s carbon emissions, so the Greenpeace response – that no bill that cuts carbon emissions is preferable to a weak one – strikes me as disingenuous.
I am all for much stronger carbon reduction measures, but please, let’s be realistic. A flawed climate change bill can still be tightened and strengthened in future years while some progress is made in the meantime – but no legislation means no progress whatsoever until the political will exists for stronger measures.
Looking ahead to the conference this December, there are seven major entities that will be involved in negotiating a carbon emissions treaty to replace the ineffective Kyoto Protocol. The EU has the most political will to negotiate meaningful cuts in global emissions, largely because its citizenry is more concerned about the consequences of climate change. In the US, weak though it may be, there is at least some political will to address the problem.
But what about China’s authoritarian regime? Or India’s democratically elected leaders? Or the political will of Putin in Russia? These countries are the largest sources of industrial carbon emissions outside of the US and the EU. Then we have Brazil and Indonesia, which have so far been unable to halt the illegal logging and clearing of their tropical rainforests.
The situation as it stands is that the latter five countries feel that the US and EU – the biggest per-capita carbon polluters – should ‘pay’ them to reduce their own emissions. Unfortunately for our global climate, I don’t see much evidence that the citizens of the west are sufficiently alarmed about the consequences to be willing to pay up.
Charles Laffiteau is a lifelong US Republican from Dallas, Texas who is currently pursuing a PhD in International Relations at DCU with a focus on environmental policy
