Jul 03, 2009

Who Will Lead the World Environmental Movement?

by Laura Starita

The news on the environment this week has been dominated by the passage by the US House of Representatives of a first-ever bill that legislates the amount of carbon emissions the country produces. The bill mandates a 17 percent decline from 2005 carbon emissions levels by 2020, and much steeper reductions by mid-century, through a combination of rules regarding the production of renewable fuels, conservation efforts and a cap-and-trade program for businesses based on their emissions production. President Obama and others are referring to this as an historic moment—So why is no one happy? Those who believe that global warming is real, and that unalterable anthropogenic change to our planet is either already underway, or soon will be, see the bill as a meaningless, low-ball effort to just something (anything) passed. Those who question the science, or at least the imminence of the danger, see the bill as just another way to tax businesses and individuals and create more opportunities for governmental waste.

The larger context seems to be that the government wants a stake in the ground for when the international community begins discussions later this year on an agreement to replace the Kyoto Protocol, which is slated to expire in 2013. Much has changed since George W. Bush declined to sign the agreement. Most relevantly, much of the finger-pointing toward the developing world, particularly China, has become outdated. One of the Bush-camp’s justifications for not signing Kyoto was that the protocol did not put explicit stops on China and India’s emissions (which those countries countered with the argument that their growth should not be fettered just because the developed-world had over-polluted the planet for everyone else). China in particular has been presented in the media as an environmental scourge—the country primarily relies on dirty-burning coal for energy, and more of its population of $1.6 billion is working its way into the middle class, acquiring middle class aspirations for cars and other appliances. Yet China put legislative emissions restrictions in place two years ago, and has been pushing forward on renewable energy projects at a rapid pace. In the words of James Fallows of the Atlantic, who wrote a piece on the subject of China’s environmental efforts last June, “China’s environmental situation is disastrous. And it is improving.“  Few acknowledge the latter, yet a Times piece this week provided new information on many of the points Fallows addressed a year ago, namely, that China is investing heavily in the development of technology to produce alternative fuels. The article pointed out, for example, that China is expected to surpass the United States as a producer of wind turbines this year.

Regardless of what you believe about the science of global climate change, it is hard to argue against the value of using less to produce more. We have already used half of the estimated oil available on the globe, and China’s significant coal resources are projected to last only another 40 more years, or so. Ignoring for a moment what the release of all that CO2 may do to the planet, the depletion of known, exhaustible resources is just simply bad business. Rising fuel prices are a pretty inevitable consequence of unfettered non-renewable energy consumption, which causes everything to get more expensive and scarce: food, travel, products. Certainly any goal regarding the eradication of poverty would have to be revised in a world where even the rich cannot afford the price of the fuel used to produce the food we eat.

No one with a realistic view of the near future could predict that Beijing’s skies will suddenly clear—the country burns way too much coal for that. Americans will sooner get out of their cars and willingly start walking everywhere (though that would be a wonderful thing, wouldn’t it?). But they certainly won’t clear if the investment in new technologies and clean-burning options is not commensurate with the problem. If the reporting is correct, China seems prepared to make such investment, or at least to see where a round of investment may lead. The US—if all the sniping and whining and low-balling is any indication—does not seem to be. I, for one, am not dismayed by the idea of a world no longer dominated economically and politically by a US-led West, though I seem to be in the minority. For the competitive among us, the question may be whether we want to hand over moral credibility as well as economic potential in yet another area to our global neighbors to the east.