2008

It was a big weekend for the delicate diplomacy of climate change.

In Brussels, EU ministers met to try to figure out how to slash greenhouse gas emissions without concomitantly putting their economies at a serious competitive disadvantage to countries that have not adopted costly emissions controls. Fortunately, French President Nicholas Sarkozy’s “solution,” to start a carbon trade war with the US and China, was quickly discarded as too protectionist.

Ultimately, the conferees backed a plan hashed out by Gordon Brown, the UK Prime Minister, and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, that would exempt EU heavy industries from emissions controls, so that they can compete on a level playing field on the global marketplace. Brown supported Merkel’s proposal in exchange for her support of his climate scheme, which entails the manipulation of the tax code to give European businesses an incentive to reduce emissions.

Of course, it is not clear what, if any, good can come from a climate plan that exempts the heaviest emitters.

Meanwhile, over in Japan, diplomats met to discuss climate policy and industry. This was Tony Blair’s first public appearance in his new role, as a roving, international climate ambassador, and he took the opportunity to urge all nations to agree to reduce emissions. This is essentially the US position, and it has proven unpopular, so you have to admire the former Prime Minister’s temerity.  

Of course, developing nations were quick to object to Blair’s idea. Chinese representatives agreed to act as soon as the west agreed to pay for it, and by the second day, the two sides—rich and poor—regressed into the sort of finger pointing that always characterizes these international climate confabs. Needless to say, the Japanese conference did not produce anything in the way of tangible results.

 As I have noted elsewhere, international climate diplomacy will always end in failure, because sovereign states have never demonstrated the capacity to share privation. There is no reason to expect them to start now, to solve an invisible “problem” that would manifest itself over centuries.

I had to make a rare foray outside the Beltway to find out where the presidential candidates stand on global warming and energy rationing legislation. Top advisers for the Clinton, McCain, and Obama campaigns appeared together Thursday night at a conference at a fancy resort in Santa Barbara hosted by the Wall Street Journal.

The conference, which was called ECO:nomics, brought together around three hundred business leaders to discuss how to use government mandates and subsidies to turn green into gold. (There were ten or so free marketeers as well.) Naturally, the crowd was very receptive to the promises from all three campaigns to make cap-and-trade legislation a top priority in the White House.

The speakers were Gene Sperling for Clinton, Douglas Holtz-Eakin for McCain, and Jason Grumet for Obama. They were all intelligent, articulate, well-informed, and slightly dull. They agreed that what the economy needs is a good stiff dose of energy rationing, but each claimed that his candidate was more committed to the global warming agenda than the other two. The differences seemed to me to be mostly hair splitting, although Senator McCain favors nuclear power and is the only one of the three who has been a leader on the issue in the Senate.

I asked how the commitment to raising energy prices squared with complaints from the candidates that gasoline prices were too high. The answers were unconvincing, I thought. Jason Grumet said that Obama would pursue a centrist policy on energy and global warming policies that the vast majority of Americans in the middle, that is, between the extremes of CEI on the right and Grist magazine on the left, would support.

The audience was invited to vote on which candidate would be best on global warming. The first vote was Clinton 17%, McCain 41%, and Obama 42%. However, voting irregularities were alleged, so a re-vote was ordered. The second vote tally was Clinton 17%, McCain 42%, and Obama 41%.