The United States is on a mission of sabotage. It is not satisfied merely to walk away from the Kyoto protocol on environment change, rather it wants to see it destroyed. President Bush as the democratically elected leader of the United States is well within his rights to question whether the protocol is necessarily or whether the US should join the agreement to make it legally enforceable. Presumably, the US electorate will judge him on his actions on that due course. But the US has gone beyond this.
Since President Bush announced in March, shortly after assuming the presidency, that the US would not ratify the Kyoto protocol as it stood, the US has actively done its best to ensure that countries like Canada, Japan and the Australia do not sign up. These three countries are critical to the Kyoto process. Under the Kyoto protocol 55 nations with 55 per cent of the global emissions must ratify the protocol to give it a legal force. Under the 55-55 rule the European Union and Eastern European countries cannot ago it alone. On their own they do not add up to 55 per cent of emissions nor do they add up to 55 countries. If Kyoto is to go anywhere, Japan and perhaps some other countries must join the European camp. But US pressure is strong. The Japanese, Canadian and Australian Governments are particularly subservient to whatever position the US takes in foreign-policy matters.
US motives must be questioned. Why should it matter to the US if the Kyoto protocol is adopted and put into effect by other countries leaving the US to do what it likes with respect to emissions of greenhouse gases. Indeed, one would have thought the US would have been in a better position in such a scenario, at least in the short-term which is all that matters to President Bush. However, that is a superficial conclusion. If the US allows the Europeans and some others together to sign up and pursue the goals of the Kyoto protocol, the US will be left behind. This is because a large amount of new technology will have to be developed to make industry more energy-efficient and more environmentally friendly. Since 1997, when the Kyoto protocol was first drawn up, many European nations set to work improving their technology under the assumption that the protocol would be ratified by enough nations to give it force of international law by 2002. Meanwhile, US industry without strong government direction sat on its hands. US industry would be at a distinct disadvantage if the Kyoto protocol had legal force.
Australia has taken a ridiculous coat-tail approach. It says it will not sign up unless the US does. Given that Australia her got so many concessions in Kyoto – – even being allowed to increase its emissions while others had pep to decrease them – – Australia would be advantaged in a post-Kyoto world. Moreover, Australia is a leader in many environmental technologies, especially solar energy and would be advantaged in a world committed to lower emissions. And this is aside from any consideration that unless something is done about greenhouse gas emissions it is likely that climate change will have a vast and deleterious effect on the world economy and standards of living.
The Labor Party has missed an opportunity here. It has a waffled around the topic.
One of the few good things to come from the US chicanery is that the Kyoto agreement and climate change in general has now been put high on the political agenda and US recalcitrance appears to have strengthened European determination to do something about the threat that hangs over us all.
It would be a joyous irony if the oil man from Texas was the catalyst for action against excessive greenhouse gas emissions.