The world will be waiting, again
p. 34 · Read in the full issue
SO US President George Bush de cided to go to Rio after all.
But only after the rest of the industrial ised world watered down an international treaty limiting emissions of earth-warming gases.
The June ‘Earth Summit’ in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, was billed as the most ambitious enivronmental conference ever held. Too ambitious for the United States government.
Of all the agreements due to be signed by the more than 100 world leaders at the conference, the most far-reaching was to have been a treaty on global warming. It was to have been the centre-piece of the summit.
l or months the While House hemmed and hawed about whether President Bush would attend the conference because it believed the treaty would hurt US industry.
Even though the US is one of the.world’s big polluters, the bottom line in this presidential election year, which has seen President Bush’s popularity plummet in the face of a stubborn economic recession, is American jobs.
In fact, the Bush administration has equivocated on global wanning from the start. Despite extending an invitation to United Nations negotiators to begin global warming talks in Washington in 1990. President Bush continued to stress the “scientific uncertainty” of the threat and to call for no more than a “framework” treaty.
But with many scientists predicting temperature increases greater than anything experienced in the past 10,000 years, the Europeans led a push to reduce the amount of industrial gases clogging the atmosphere and trapping solar heat like a
greenhouse.
They proposed freezing carbon dioxide emissions at 1990 levels by the year 2000. White Llouse aides were horrified.
Realising that without President Bush the Rio conference would lose political clout, they warned he may not attend.
The Europeans relented. Better to have something than nothing. Mr Bush personally telephoned the leaders of France, Canada, Japan, the Netherlands, Germany and Britain to argue against the treaty and a compromise was crafted.
The treaty President Bush agreed to instead committed governments to vague goals for reducing all “greenhouse” gases, not just carbon dioxide.
President Bush then announced that he would go to Rio. “I am convinced that we can have jobs and economic growth as well as sound environmental practice,” he said. “That’s the message I’ll be taking to Rio.”
A spokesman for the environmental group, the Sierra Club, Daniel Becker, disagreed, “President Bush has forced the world to accept the do-nothing treaty.”
Most environmentalists, while disappointed, appreciated that the treaty will at least provide a first step. Among the most disappointed, however, were “leaders from the Pacific island stales.”
Washington
On the same day as the President’s announcement, newspapers reported the findings of a new study on the effects of global warming on Pacific islands and other low-lying coastal areas.
The study, done by the US Na tional Oceanic and Atmospheric Ad ministration, warned that tiny nations like Kiribati, Tuvalu and Tonga could become the “innocent victims” of global warming.
Focussing on the Marshall Islands as a case study, it says that the state’s 45,000 people will need to be re housed or evacuated within 30 years if ocean levels rise as much as some
scientific predictions.
For instance, if ocean levels rise a little over a foot, the population of the 29 atolls and five islands of the Marshall Islands would need to be re-housed in high-rise buildings near the highest points on the archipelago by the year 2022.
If ocean levels rise by the upper estimates of three feet a century, the study says the entire population would be forced to abandon the islands.
It says its conclusions appear valid for a number of other island states mainly in the Pacific and Indian Oceans.
Many of the island states, led by Vanuatu’s Ambassador to the United Nations, Robert Van Lierop, argue that the fear of flooding is already deterring foreign investment. They want industrial nations, which release most of the earth-warming gases, to recognise their responsibility by insuring investors against being washed away.
Ambassador Van Lierop, who heads the 37-member Alliance of Small Island States, says an even greater concern is for the small landowners who face “economic and cultural ruin, for people whose entire country could be gone.”
“The problem cannot wait for conclusive proof because you could say that the proof will kill us,” said Ambassador Van
Lierop.
While the Europeans may have been forced to back down on the treaty, they have come to Rio armed with a new
proposal to limit pollution.
They want to impose a tax on all forms of fuel such as coal, oil and gas but exempt energy produced by sun, waves and wind.
The logic is that by driving up fuel costs, consumers would become more efficient and save energy - and markedly cut global warming.
The catch is that the European Community won’t adopt the fuel tax plan unless its major trading partners such as Japan and the United States also comply. So the world will be waiting for President Bush again.