Bush Uses Global Coalition to Fight Terror, But Not Polluters

Either you're with us or not, on the side of good or on the side of the evil ones. That's been the mantra of George W. Bush and his advisers as they have endeavored to gather overseas support for their global war on terrorism. If they consider taking such a position to be an effective tool of diplomacy, perhaps the rest of the world ought to adopt a similar stance regarding the United States and global warming: either you join us and give a damn about the future of the climate, or you don't and are an enemy of the atmosphere.

As Bush enjoyed a fortunate stretch (the encouraging collapse, or strategic retreat, of the Taliban and the successful, arms-cutting down-home summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin), the good news from Afghanistan overwhelmed the few media reports on the agreement reached by 165 countries -- not including, notably, the United States -- on a climate control treaty that establishes mandatory reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. As these nations hammered out pesky details of the Kyoto Protocol during a session in Morocco, the Bush administration lazed about on the sidelines.

That the conference succeeded in devising a set of rules was a blow to Bush. Earlier this year, he yanked the United States -- the leading producer of global warming gasses, such as carbon dioxide -- out of the Kyoto Protocol, declaring it would be too costly for the U.S. economy to abide by compulsory emissions reductions. And Sept. 11 did not alter the administration's attitude. So this is the current Bush position: the United States requests that the nations of the world assist it in protecting itself from an external threat, but the United States will not support a project to protect other nations (and itself) from environmental harm.

No doubt, the Bush administration had hoped that, with the United States out of the picture, other industrial nations would retreat ("Hey, why should we cut our greenhouse gasses, if America won't") and this would trigger the collapse of the Kyoto process. Then Bush could say, "Told you this was a bad deal, nobody's sticking with it." But the other countries -- including European partners in Bush's anti-terrorism coalition -- stayed the course.

The United States absence, though, did lead to a weak deal in Morocco. With Washington abstaining, other major emitters of global warming gasses possessed more clout, for any additional walk-outs could scuttle the whole accord. Consequently, Russia, Japan and Australia were able to win assorted loopholes -- as the delegates finalized details of a scheme that would grant nations emission credits for certain actions (such as protecting forests, which absorb carbon dioxide), and that would allow countries to buy and sell these credits. (For not cutting down a tree, a country can claim a credit. It can then sell that credit to another country, permitting the buyer to pollute more than it would otherwise be allowed to do.)

In a move that troubled environmentalists, the Morocco session doubled Russia's emissions credits. "That one piece turned Marrakesh into a Pyrrhic victory," says Daniel Becker, director of the Sierra Club's global warming and energy program. "Now, India and China will come along and ask for the same. They can say that Russia got to sell their forests and if you don't let us do that, you're racist." And were China and India -- up-and-coming emissions producers -- to receive the same deal, they would face less pressure to reduce emissions when it's their turn to cut back. (The Kyoto Protocol sensibly calls on the industrialized countries, which are responsible for 75 percent or so of the human-made carbon dioxide already pumped into the atmosphere, to start decreasing emissions before developing nations do so.)