-Caveat Lector-
http://www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/content/2005/s1409293.htm
Bush looks to new technologies to tackle climate change
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The World Today - Thursday, 7 July , 2005 12:14:00
Reporter: Hamish Robertson
HAMISH ROBERTSON: President George Bush has already made it clear that the
United States will continue to oppose any Kyoto-style deal on climate
change. But although he still rejects the concept of legally binding
carbon emission reductions, he does accept that global warming is a
problem and has to be dealt with.
GEORGE BUSH: I recognise that the surface of the earth is warmer, and that
an increase in greenhouse gasses caused by humans is contributing to the
problem. Kyoto didn't work for the United States, and it frankly didn't
work for the world.
HAMISH ROBERTSON: President George Bush speaking in Denmark overnight.
Mr Bush also told a British commercial television network that he wants to
discuss with his fellow G8 leaders how climate change could be tackled
through the use of new technologies.
Well, does this amount to a significant concession by Mr Bush, or will it
be dismissed out of hand by most environmentalists as inadequate?
A short time ago I put this to the distinguished environmental scientist
Professor Stephen Schneider, co-director of the Centre for Environmental
Science and Policy at Stanford University.
STEPHEN SCHNEIDER: I think it's a little bit of both. The President has
long been in what we cynically call climate denial, and of course this
doesn't surprise people from the environmental side, because the President
and the Vice-President were all Chief Economic Officers of oil companies,
and the fact that producing oil and burning coal oil and gas is the prime
cause of the greenhouse gas increases, and therefore the number one
concern for global warming, that they're not particularly interested in
regulations on their former industries or their friends and campaign
contributors.
On the other hand, it is true that the President has been shifting back to
his actual campaign position when he said that global warming should be
taken seriously, then all of a sudden after getting into the office he
flipped around on that and then said it was too uncertain for policy and
that the policies would be economically devastating to America.
Now he's coming back again to saying well, we need to do something about
it but we'll use our technological machinery to solve it. Actually, I
happen to agree with that we do need to use our technological machinery
to solve it.
Where I strongly disagree with the President is the idea that somehow we
can have a voluntary way by saying well, technologists, go out there and
invent our way out of this problem that you've created through the
technologies you developed in the Victorian industrial revolution, like
coal burning and internal combustion engine automobiles.
People aren't going to spend a billion dollars a year on research and
development without incentives, and the incentives either have to be
direct subsidies, which is the less efficient way, or simply fees for
everybody who dumps their waste in the atmosphere.
If we had a sewer fee, that would put a very strong incentive on being
cleaner, which would then be a strong incentive for industries to develop
those cleaning technologies, and that's what most people in the world are
calling for that the President is still resisting, because he doesn't want
any controls on his former industry.
HAMISH ROBERTSON: And you would clearly reject the frequent assertions by
President Bush that any Kyoto-style deal would cripple the United States
economy?
STEPHEN SCHNEIDER: Well, to be charitable, it's abysmal ignorance. To be
less charitable it's deliberate misrepresentation. There have been study
after study after study which shows that when you look at the numbers and
you say it's going to cost the economy X number of tens of billions of
dollars to do these actions, like taxing carbon or reducing the emissions
from automobiles by putting some mileage standards on the sport utility
vehicles, what these studies show is that those numbers, inside of the
fact that they're exaggerated, even if they were true, they're a small
fraction of the growth rate of the GDP.
If you take a look at the implementation of the Kyoto Protocol, and people
have run economic models, and I'm not talking about left-wing economists,
this is mainstream stuff, what they find is that the average person in the
United States at least, would be about 25 per cent richer in 2020 with
Kyoto in April of 2020, and without Kyoto they'd be 25 per cent richer on
New Year's Day.
So if that is too high a insurance premium to pay to start reducing the
problem, then I think you have very seriously broken values, and I think
that's the problem with the Bush administration, is that their values are
all on private entrepreneurial rights and protection of the industries
that fund their campaigns, and they've entirely ignored their
responsibility to try to protect the life support system of the earth.
Even if the numbers of the costs might sound large, they're really very
small relative to growth rates in the economy, and they never say that,
and even though we tell them over and over again they just keep ignoring
it, so it makes me wonder whether this is just ignorance or whether this
is strategic ignorance.
HAMISH ROBERTSON: If it is strategic ignorance, are you encouraged by the
apparent change of mood in Congress, and indeed in some sections of the
Republican Party, for example the very strong criticism of President Bush
by Republican Senator John McCain?
STEPHEN SCHNEIDER: Well, Senator McCain has always been a Maverick, and
that's been the strength of the Senate. If there were statespersons in the
United States it's typically in the Senate, and I've testified to his
committee and was exceedingly impressed that he really cared about the
problem and he was putting it ahead of partisan politics.
In fact in California, where I come from, we have a rather famous
Republican Governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and not only is he going to
defend the climate policies of his democratic predecessor, he's actually
strengthening them to where it's the strongest target of any country in
the world. Remember, California is about the fifth or sixth largest
economy in the world, so it really matters.
So at least in California, the Democrats and the Republicans, who squabble
as you'd expect, just as you'd get Labor and the conservatives squabbling
here in Australia, they buried their hatchets on this one and they said
this is for the health of our environment and for the health of our
citizens.
So, so far there are models out there of people cooperating, and Kyoto
itself is an incredible model of cooperation between rich and poor
countries and other things, and the fact that Bush and, I'm sorry to say,
at least the Prime Minister and the Prime Minister's Cabinet in Australia
seems to be in the Bush side, have been in some combination of climate
denial or using uncertainty as an excuse to inaction while they certainly
didn't have any uncertainty arguments about weapons of mass destruction
when they went into Iraq.
So the consistency is not there, and I think that those kinds of things
are not lost on people. And though Bush is moving a little bit more in
that direction, he was beginning to look like he was totally isolated.
Almost everybody else in the world accepts the science, not that it's an
absolute certainty, but that there's a high probability that we've changed
the climate already and that it will change a lot more, and then at least
some of the outcomes will be dangerous, and if you accept that how can you
do nothing about it and look like you're a rational or responsible leader.
So he's now going to play the technology card, but he's not going to play
the incentive card that costs his industry anything. And until that
happens, the incentives won't be sufficient to make a really big
difference.
HAMISH ROBERTSON: I was speaking there to Professor Stephen Schneider,
Co-director of the Centre for Environmental Science and Policy at Stanford
University, who's currently in Adelaide for the Festival of Ideas.
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