California dreaming
Selling green in Detroit and Poznan
The Economist.com, Dec 8th 2008
THE movers and shakers in the world of climate change may have come to Poland this week for the United Nations’ annual climate jamboree, but their eyes are on America. At the same event next year, it is hoped, the world will agree on a replacement for the Kyoto Protocol, the UN’s treaty to curb global warming. Everyone assumes that securing a new deal requires America’s enthusiastic participation. So while the official proceedings will consist of impenetrable debates about “avoided deforestation” and “common but differentiated responsibilities”, the talk behind the scenes will focus on what America’s next government will be ready to do in December 2009.
Initial signs are good. Barack Obama, the incoming president, says he wants to reduce America’s greenhouse-gas emissions to 80% below the level of 1990 by 2050. His fellow Democrats, who tend to be more anxious about global warming than Republicans, have increased their majorities in both chambers of Congress. And the idea that a green stimulus might help rescue America from the economic doldrums is gaining ground.
Waxman leads the charge (AP)
As further proof of America’s increased appetite for greenery, many observers cite the toppling last month of John Dingell as chairman of a committee in the House of Representatives through which global-warming bills must pass. Mr Dingell, who represents the hinterlands of Detroit and has been a fierce defender of America’s carmakers, was supplanted by Henry Waxman (pictured), who represents Beverly Hills and Santa Monica, and is something of a consumer advocate and environmental crusader.
Mr Waxman, after all, has put forward one of the most ambitious of the many different climate-change bills now circulating in Congress. By contrast, environmentalists complained that Mr Dingell’s draft bill cosseted big business by deferring tough cuts in emissions to the distant future.
Mr Dingell had also helped Detroit to stave off increases in fuel-economy standards for cars for decades. Some environmentalists even accuse him of coddling America’s auto industry to death, by shielding it from environmental pressures for so long that it now finds itself at a devastating technological disadvantage to rivals from greener countries.
But Mr Dingell’s chumminess with industry was not all bad. Utilities, carmakers, oil firms and the like will have an integral role to play in reducing America’s emissions. Congress should not pander to them when crafting legislation, but it should not ignore them either. The relevant committees in both the House and the Senate are now headed by Californians, who have few energy-intensive, metal-bashing factories in their constituencies. The symbolism of Beverly Hills usurping Detroit in the legislative pecking order will not be lost on workers and firms in the rust belt who fear that aggressive curbs on greenhouse gases will deal a fatal blow to America’s already ailing heavy industry.
Indeed, one reason why America has been slow to act on climate change is that many see it as a Hollywood fad, rather than a bread-and-butter issue like the economy, or healthcare or immigration. A handful of retired generals and evangelical preachers have recently joined Oscar-winner Al Gore in trumpeting the cause, but otherwise the most famous advocates are film stars like Leonardo DiCaprio. They tend to beat people over the head with the evils of our carbon-infused way of life.
A few politicians, including Mr Obama, are beginning to hone a cannier sales pitch: that tackling climate change is a way to revive America’s economy, not weigh it down further. But Mr Dingell would have been a much more convincing exponent of this view than Mr Waxman. The risk now is that environmentally-minded lawmakers will over-reach, and push for a measure that big business cannot stomach.
Something similar has happened recently in the European Union, where stringent emissions standards for cars and equally restrictive industrial-emissions caps for several countries in Eastern Europe are currently coming unstuck. In the midst of a nasty recession, it seems, EU governments are not quite as green as they imagined themselves to be just a few months ago. At any rate, they seem no more prepared to face down their carmakers and utilities than America’s next government is likely to be.
To get meaningful, lasting laws on climate change passed and implemented, industry must be reassured, not alienated. By that measure, American politics is not looking as hopeful as the eager crowd in Poznan might think.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment