Early in the Bush presidency, some of the leading global warming advocates had a meeting with Sununu, Darman and Bromley. Sununu probed the computer models. Did they couple the atmosphere and the ocean? No, came the reply. Sununu pointed out that the thermal capacity of the oceans could not be ignored. Computer models that only took account of the atmosphere were meaningless. Although his interlocutors were not happy that the White House chief of staff was unsupportive, Sununu authorised a large increase in funding for climate modelling.[14] In two years, spending more than doubled to $1.03bn.[15]
Reilly and Sununu often clashed. Shortly after James Baker’s speech on global warming, Reilly made a similar speech on the subject. The next day, Sununu rang to tell him it wasn’t administration policy. Reilly replied that he has taken the same line as Baker. ‘He has?’ asked Sununu, ‘I’ll talk to Jim.’ Baker subsequently announced he was rescuing himself from involvement in the area to avoid potential conflicts of interest over his personal investments. ‘You’ll never win against the White House,’ Baker’s deputy, Bob Zoellick, told Reilly.[16]
In October 1989, Bush asked Bromley to chair the White House climate change working group. The next month he and Reilly led the US delegation to the Noordwijk ministerial conference. ‘Neither we nor anyone known to us had any detailed economic or technical understanding of what would be involved in achieving this level of emissions [reductions],’ Bromley recorded.
The lack of economic analysis was astonishing … I asked the head of one of the major European delegations how exactly his country intended to achieve the projected emissions goals and was told, ‘Who knows – after all it’s only a piece of paper and they don’t put you in jail if you don’t actually do it.’[17]
At the Malta summit with President Gorbachev in December 1989, when the two announced the end of the Cold War, Bush said he would host a White House conference on the environment and global warming the following spring. The Council of Economic Advisers studied the economics of global warming, its conclusions forming part of the Council’s 1990 annual report published in February that year. Its chairman, Michael Boskin, was concerned at reliance on primitive attempts to model the climate and the failure of other governments to analyse the economics. Global warming champions were environment ministries. Their lexicographical preference, to use Boskin’s term, was to treat the impact on economic performance as ancillary. Boskin alerted the economic ministries of other governments, but was frustrated that they continued to take a back seat to environment ministries.[18]
The Council of Economic Advisers did some preliminary cost/benefit and risk analysis. Boskin brought in outside expertise, notably Yale economist William Nordhaus, a former Carter administration official and the leading economist in the field. The Council noted that there was ‘an extremely high level of uncertainty’ regarding possible future climate change. Unlike policies to combat depletion of the ozone layer, there were no low-cost substitutes for fossil fuels.[19] The cost of gradually reducing US carbon dioxide emissions by twenty per cent over the course of the next one hundred and ten years was estimated at between $800bn under optimistic scenarios to $3.6 trillion under pessimistic ones, between thirty-five to one hundred and fifty times greater than the EPA’s estimates of the costs of completely phasing out CFCs by the end of the twentieth century.[20]
The study estimated the impact on the economy of carbon dioxide reduction policies by reference to the 1973 and 1979 oil price shocks and their impact in reducing the energy intensity of economic activity. With no growth in energy consumption between 1973 and 1985, carbon dioxide emissions were flat. But these were also years of economic weakness. Although caused by many factors, ‘higher energy prices clearly played an important role’, the report said. Policies designed to stabilise emissions could halve the growth rate of the global economy.[21]
Reducing emissions was even harder for the US because of its dependence on coal-fired power stations, which contributed fifty-six per cent of America’s electricity in 1986. Canada, France and Sweden generated more than eighty per cent of their electricity from nuclear, hydroelectric or geothermal sources.[22] Germany had a similar reliance on coal, but had an ace up its sleeve.
With the costs of substantially slowing carbon dioxide emissions likely to reach trillions of dollars, what, the report asked, might be the benefits? Most sectors of industrialised economies were not climate sensitive. Estimates of the impact on world agriculture of a doubling of carbon dioxide ranged from $35–70 billion a year on pessimistic scenarios, with the US losing $1 billion annually, to small net gains.[23] By comparison, trade-distorting agricultural policies were reckoned to cost $35 billion a year for the world and $10 billion a year for the US.[24]
The report concluded that without improved understanding of the impacts and likelihood of global warming, there was no justification for imposing large costs on the American economy. The adoption of many small programmes, each of which failed a standard cost-benefit analysis, could significantly slow economic growth and eliminate jobs, the Council warned. Any strategy to limit aggregate emissions without worldwide participation was likely to fail, the report stated.
The Bush administration was the only Western government to seriously analyse the economics of global warming, widening the rift between it and the rest of the West. This became particularly evident in April at the White House conference on the environment. Held in a Marriot hotel, the president gave the opening and closing addresses. ‘Two scientists, two diametrically opposed points of view – now where does that leave us?’ Bush asked in his first address, pointing to a couple of scientists who had been arguing about the science on a TV talk show.[25] Unimpressed, was the verdict of many participants. After a round of polite applause, European delegates quickly headed for the lobby with critical comments for reporters. Germany’s environmental minister, Klaus Töpfer, criticised the US. ‘Gaps in information should not be used as an excuse for worldwide inaction,’ Töpfer told the Washington Post.[26] Lucien Bouchard, Canada’s environment minister, chimed in: ‘The price of inaction is too high.’[27] Bert Bolin, who managed to get an invitation although he had not been on the original guest list, criticised those hiding behind ‘the concept of uncertainty’. Because of the inertia of the climate system and the energy stored in the oceans, Bolin told the conference, ‘We are [therefore] committed to a further change [of the climate] of perhaps [an additional] fifty per cent.’[28] Fifty per cent of what? Bolin didn’t say.
Administration officials tried to push back. ‘Up until now, the conferences I’ve been to haven’t focused at all on economics,’ Reilly told a journalist. ‘I don’t trust a commitment that is made without some knowledge of the cost.’ But Allen Meyer of the Union of Concerned Scientists was dismissive. ‘This conference is yet another example of the yawning chasm between George Bush’s campaign rhetoric on global warming and the reality of his administration’s policy of inaction.’[29]
Not everyone was hostile. ‘President Bush is absolutely correct,’ said Soviet Deputy Prime Minister Nikolay Laverov on Bush’s comments linking environmental wellbeing and economic welfare. ‘The two are interwoven, and that is what differentiates this conference from other conferences of this kind.’[30]
Negative reactions to the president’s speech prompted a change of heart. Reilly suggested to Bush and Darman’s deputy, Robert Grady, that it was possible to cool it down and join the ranks of the concerned without abandoning the administration’s opposition to targets and timetables.[31] Grady produced a draft. ‘Above all,’ the president said in his closing address, ‘the climate change debate is not about research versus action, for we’ve never considered research a substitute for action.’[32]
Travelling in the president’s car, Bush asked Reilly if the speech had gone all right. Reilly began to answer but Bush cut him off: ‘I know; I showed I give a shit.’[33]
‘Bush does about-face at warmi
ng conference,’ the headline said in USA Today.[34] Bolin was pleased. ‘I take the president’s speech to be a clear signal to proceed very vigorously with what we are trying to do with the IPCC,’ he told journalists.[35] The president was inching closer to Rio.
Canada proposed that Maurice Strong be the conference secretary-general. Bush had known Strong from his days as American ambassador at the UN. Despite being seen as a Democrat, Bush, in ‘typically gentlemanly fashion indicated that I was OK’.[36] The view was not reciprocated. ‘A phoney’ and a ‘horse’s rump’ was how administration insiders came to view him.[37]
Rio was to be the culmination of a two-decade long effort to bring environmental issues from the side-lines to the centre of international politics. As Strong told the 1990 Geneva climate conference:
It will focus on the need for fundamental changes in our economic behaviour and in international economic relations, particularly between North and South, to bring about a new, sustainable and equitable balance between the economic and environmental needs and aspirations of the world community.[38]
For the developing world, the Earth Summit promised to be a bonanza. ‘This is about sharing power,’ said Rizali Ismail, Malaysia’s UN ambassador.
When it was East vs. West, our development needs were ignored unless you were a marionette of the Soviet Union or the US. Now with the environment seriously frightening many people in comfortable paradise areas, for the first time people are taking us seriously.[39]
Pakistan’s Mahbubul Haq estimated that the industrial countries would have a ‘peace dividend’ of $1,200 billion to distribute over the next ten years.[40] India’s lead climate negotiator, Chandrashekhar Dasgupta, contrasted the split between the US and the rest, and the cohesiveness of the developing world, with China speaking on behalf of the G77 plus China, enhancing the effectiveness of the South in the negotiations.[41]
The potential for a feeding frenzy set alarm bells ringing in Brazil. José Goldemberg, the Brazilian minister in charge of preparing for the summit, became convinced that the summit was heading for disaster.[42] Brazil wanted to be seen making amends for its previous negative attitudes towards.[43] In the 1970s, Brazil had been wary of environmentalism as international concern about preservation of the Amazon rainforest was regarded by Brazil’s military rulers as interference in the country’s national sovereignty.
That changed when President Sarney came to power in 1985, ending military rule. Sarney pressed for Brazil to host the 1992 summit in response to an international outcry about forest fires in the Amazon. Brazilian scientists had concluded that deforestation was not as extensive as the international press had claimed, but that it could also significantly harm the regional climate of parts of the country.[44]
Fernando Collor de Mello, who succeeded Sarney in 1990, had an added incentive. Under a cloud of corruption charges, Collor hoped that hosting the world’s largest summit might win him a reprieve (he was forced to resign at the end of 1992). To prepare for the summit Goldemberg, a physics professor, met Sununu, the engineering Ph.D. Although Sununu had, Goldemberg thought, a reasonable grasp of the science, he felt Sununu was typically American in thinking if temperatures did rise then technology and air conditioning were the answer.[45]
In April 1991, reinforcements landed in Brazil. Sailing up the Amazon, the Royal Yacht Britannia berthed at Belém. It was Prince Charles’s idea to bring together politicians, businessmen and NGO representatives. The most important invitee to the seminar was Collor. When he got wind that Collor might not come, he sent a hand-written letter. ‘The Royal Yacht is sailing all the way out to Brazil especially for this seminar so as to provide what I hoped to be a reasonably neutral and relaxed setting for such a gathering,’ the prince wrote. If Collor didn’t come, the prince continued, ‘I think it would give the wrong signals to many people who are looking forward towards the importance of the 1992 United Nations Conference.’[46]
It was just as well Collor came, as the prince had also invited Reilly. Brazilian protocol meant that the venue for the meeting between Collor, Goldemberg and two other ministers in Collor’s Cabinet was held on a vessel of the Brazilian navy. Sitting around a table on the boat’s deck, there was a lively discussion on prospects for the conference. The planning looked chaotic, Reilly pitched in. The summit was heading for disaster. As things stood, he would recommend that the president should not go. Collor said that the presence of sixty-five heads of state was worth less than the president. If Bush comes, we will not allow him to be embarrassed, Collor promised. On his return, Reilly switched his recommendation. The Brazilians kept their side of the deal, Reilly believes. ‘They put on a first rate show.’[47]
Sununu’s departure from the White House at the end of 1991 raised hopes that the administration would soften its opposition to targets and timetables. They were quickly disappointed. On coming to the White House to head the Policy Coordinating Group, Clayton Yeutter was aghast. ‘Why in the world is this summit meeting being held and, for heaven’s sake, why in our presidential election year?’ he asked.[48] Rio was putting the administration in an impossible position as the US was bound to be criticised whatever it did. Yeutter tried to find out who in the administration had agreed to the summit in the first place, but got no satisfactory answer. At the same time, the White House became increasingly aware that the other developed nations were playing by different rules and approaching Rio in a different spirit. Yeutter spoke to a senior European diplomat. Would his country be prepared to accept the pledges and commitments expected of them? Of course, came the reply. Would his country be able to carry out those pledges and commitments? Of course not.[49]
Hypocrisy has always played a role in international relations. Why couldn’t the US play by the same rules as everyone else? When other governments sign a treaty, the hard work is over. For an American president, it is just the beginning. There is more risk in treaty ratification than in negotiating it in the first place. Treaties, especially ones with potentially enormous implications for domestic policy, present institutional challenges almost entirely absent in countries with parliamentary systems. In those, the government controls the legislature and writes the legislation that turns the provisions of a treaty into domestic law. If the courts start to interpret in ways not envisaged by the executive, the government can always amend the original legislation.
In the US, obtaining a two-thirds majority in the Senate requires the president to commit his time and prestige. Deals might have to be cut with reluctant senators. The Senate can attach ‘reservations’ or ‘understandings’, changing what the president proposes. Further uncertainty comes from how the courts might interpret the treaty. A global warming treaty with emissions cuts hardwired in the text risked being a blank cheque for Congress, with the courts determining the terms of payment.
Domestic and foreign policy advisers in the Bush White House disagreed whether it mattered if the US failed to meet its targets. Yeutter stated that the administration should not agree to binding targets. Brent Scowcroft, national security adviser, argued that in international conventions, every day, the US made commitments it wasn’t sure it could keep.[50]
A meeting at the White House in April 1992 brought home to Goldemberg and the Brazilians just how precarious the prospects for American participation in the summit had become. Despite Goldemberg’s lowly status, Scowcroft invited him to meet the president where he explained what the summit meant to Brazil.
The White House insisted that all language about guilt and crimes of the developed world be removed from the Earth Charter. Collor despatched Goldemberg to visit China and India to reconcile the G77 stance with the American position and tone down the language. It didn’t prevent the April meeting of the G77 in Kuala Lumpur from reaffirming the developed world’s crimes and guilt.[51]
If Bush was going to Rio, there had to be an agreement that he could sign. All the indications were that the U
S would not sign the biodiversity convention (President Clinton did in June 1993, but the Senate did not ratify it). That meant the administration had to agree the climate change convention or the president staying away. At crunch meetings in Paris, the American negotiating team tested the waters to see if there might be a way to bridge the gap with the Europeans. They knew there was no way that the US or, for that matter, most of the other developed nations could scale their carbon dioxide emissions back to 1990 levels. Staring into the abyss of failure, the British side approached the Americans to see if there might be language to finesse the issue. The Americans returned to Washington and worked up a text.[52]
At the end of April, Michael Howard went to Washington with a version of the text in his pocket. On 29th April he visited five different federal departments and agencies. At his 9am meeting at the EPA, Reilly told Howard that it was essential for the US to sign. The outcome depended on Howard’s meeting later that day at the State Department. At the Energy Department, its secretary, Admiral Watkins, also told Howard that his meeting at the State Department was crucial, but that the US should have nothing to do with the convention. Howard had lunch at the British embassy with two senior White House aides who expressed diametrically opposite views. The only thing they could agree on was that the outcome depended entirely on Howard’s meeting at the State Department.[53]
The Age of Global Warming: A History Page 23