September 2007

The Bush Administration is hosting a meeting of Major Emitter Nations in Washington on September 27-8.  The oft-stated claim is that this meeting is not meant to compete with the upcoming negotiations for a second round of Kyoto reductions at the annual UN meeting in December, which this year is being held in Bali.  Instead, the major emitters meeting is supposed to contribute to the Kyoto process. 

That’s the official Bush Administration position, but it looks more and more like the major emitters meeting, together with the Asia Pacific Partnership, is a plausible replacement for the Kyoto Protocol when it expires at the end of 2012.  

Kyoto calls for industrialized nations to cut greenhouse gas emissions 6% below 1990 levels by 2008 to 2012.  From the start in 1997, however, Kyoto has been a mess. China, now the world’s #1 emitter, and other rapidly developing nations, such as Brazil and India, ratified Kyoto but did not undertake any commitments to reduce emissions.

Although Kyoto’s targets are supposed to be binding, the European Union, Canada, and Japan are not meeting them.  Emissions are rising and in some countries rising rapidly.  The EU’s performance since 1997 lags that of the U. S.  It’s not clear how a second round can be negotiated under these circumstances.  In this context, the major emitters meeting looks like an alternative path.

A hint of where that path may lead was given by the recent APEC summit in Sydney, where it was agreed that there should be long-term “aspirational” emissions targets.  The purpose of the Washington meeting is reportedly to set this voluntary long-term goal, plus adopt intermediate goals and then create a number of teams to work on specific issues.

The European Union will oppose this approach and try to keep Kyoto going, but it appears that Japan and Canada have already jumped off the Kyoto bandwagon.  China and some of the other big developing nations appear to have a foot in each camp.  On the one hand, China and India support a second Kyoto round if it will result in continuing and increased transfers of wealth from industrialized nations to them.  On the other hand, they remained adamant in refusing to undertake mandatory emissions reductions themselves and have welcomed the idea of aspirational targets.

It may be that Kyoto and Kyoto’s replacement can both limp along for a few years, but at some point it seems almost inescapable that China, India, Brazil, and the other rising economies will have to choose one or the other.  As long as no country can demonstrate that it can cut its emissions without damaging its economy, it seems likely that Kyoto will continue to wither and the major emitters process will become the only game around.  

Even though the House and Senate anti-energy bills and the various cap-and-trade bills to ration energy are stalled for the moment, the campaign against affordable energy continues in Washington. As reported by Reuters, Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), Chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, has written a letter to the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, Stephen Johnson, claiming that the EPA's recent licensing of construction of a coal-fired power plant in Utah is illegal.

Waxman's letter argues that the Supreme Court's decision in Massachusetts v. EPA defines carbon dioxide as a pollutant and therefore EPA is legally obliged to regulate it. I don't doubt that EPA may eventually decide to regulate CO2 emissions, but Waxman is jumping the gun. EPA is in the process of deciding whether and how to regulate CO2 from autos and trucks, as the Supreme Court ordered it to do. Power plants may indeed be included in that decision. In the meantime, EPA has no regulations in place to regulate carbon dioxide emissions. To deny a permit for a new power plant today on the grounds that greenhouse gases may be regulated in the future would be an audacious as well as most peculiar expansion of regulatory authority.

Waxman is trying to add another weapon to the burgeoning campaign against coal by environmental pressure groups. The fact is that the growing demand for electricity in America cannot possibly be met in the next few years without building scores, perhaps even hundreds, of new coal-fired plants. If Waxman and his allies are successful, the result will be to export California's electricity shortages, blackouts, and high prices to the rest of the country. Misery really does love company.

Backed by the White House, corn-state governors and solid blocks on both sides of Congress’s partisan divide, the politics of biofuels could hardly look sunnier. The economics of the American drive to increase ethanol in the energy supply are more discouraging.

Environmentalists have made many apocalyptic predictions over the last several decades. Virtually none has come to pass. Yet each time, the greens and their political allies proclaim victory, arguing their preventive prescriptions averted disaster.

Such is the case with the 1987 Montreal Protocol On Substances That Deplete The Ozone Layer (Montreal Protocol). The lurid predictions of ozone depletion-induced skin cancer epidemics, ecosystem destruction and others haven't come true, for which Montreal Protocol proponents congratulate themselves.

But in retrospect, the evidence shows ozone depletion was an exaggerated threat in the first place. As the treaty parties return to Montreal for their 20th anniversary meeting it should be cause for reflection, not celebration, especially for those who hope to repeat this "success story" in the context of global warming.

Over six and a half billion dollars were given to environmental groups in 2006, according to the June 28, 2007 issue of “Chronicle of Philanthropy.”  But how many of the good people who donated to these groups know that some of their money is used to thwart mining projects destined to help poverty-stricken people in poverty-stricken nations? The groups don’t publicize this fact.

For example, when you go on the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) website you see lots of pictures of adorable animals and stories of WWF projects to save gorillas and macaws. But they don’t publicize the dirty fact that they are working to bring down a mining project in Madagascar, the world’s third poorest country.

Most U.S. citizens care about the United States’ reputation in the world. Yet we’re turning a blind-eye to the developing world’s increasing resentment towards us caused by First-World environmental groups, who seek to impose their green values on the developing world and bring down much-needed projects. In our arrogance, we use our own land for large office buildings, factories, and shopping malls, but we can’t allow them to use their own land for a desired mining project, consigning the world’s poorer nations to slow—and in some cases no—economic growth.

But as Snezhina Kovacheva states, “(E)nvironmental mitigation is a value-added good. As a country's wealth increases, its citizens recognize that a better environment enhances the quality of life. Accordingly, the population starts investing a larger portion of its greater resources into developing cleaner technologies.” As seen in the area of global warming, the United States was able to reduce its emissions (relative to GDP) further through energy efficiency, than those of the Kyoto-signers.

The EU alliance plans to help developing countries prepare for future disasters, take advantage of the global carbon market, and cut emissions from deforestation.

A September 18, 2007 article by Troy Lennon in the Daily Telegraph, Sydney about the Northwest Passage, “Trip that caused the toughest to tremble,” completely missed the point.

The author says in the third paragraph, “If global warming continues, it may just achieve what thousands of people tried and failed to do — open up a northwest passage from the Atlantic through to the Pacific.”

Then at the end of the article he details those explorers that did transverse it, albeit not for commerce.

In the 20th century someone actually sailed along the route. In 1906 Norwegian Roald Amundsen braved the course aboard the Gjoa, a converted herring boat.

In 1940-42 Canadian Mounted Police officer Henry Larsen sailed the St Roch — a diesel-powered schooner clad in Australian ironbark timber — from Vancouver to Halifax. It was the first to sail the passage from west to east. In 1944 he sailed from Halifax to Vancouver, setting a record of 86 days — the first vessel to sail the passage in a single season. But cost has stopped commerce from following the adventurers.

 The Northwest Passage has been traveled many times before: in 1906, 1942, 1944, 1957, 1969, 1977, and 1984. And the Vikings may have even succeeded earlier. Don’t believe the alarmists that say that the opening of this route portends the end of the world.