As a policy disaster in the making, global warming reminds Turnbull of the poll tax. At the beginning, people went along with it because they thought it a small-scale, incremental policy. After it went wrong and helped bring about Thatcher’s fall, they would say, ‘It’s not my fault it blew up, I wouldn’t have done it if I’d known what happened subsequently.’ The European dimension of global warming reinforced this tendency. Here was a policy where Britain wasn’t being a foot-dragger. Since Thatcher’s Royal Society speech in 1988, the UK had been in a lead position. The dash-to-gas allowed Britain to show off at little apparent cost. Only later would the costs emerge in terms of closed steel mills, distorted tax policies and unattainable targets for renewable energy.[12]
The Buenos Aires COP4 was held in the first two weeks of November 1998. It adopted the Buenos Aires Plan of Action to put flesh on the bones of the Protocol by the end of 2000. More importantly, it turned out to be the high point of the Clinton administration’s campaign to get some meaningful participation from developing countries.
It began promisingly. On the conference’s first day Maria Julia Alsogaray, Argentina’s secretary of natural resources and sustainable development, told the conference that while Argentina did not bear historic responsibility for the climate change problem, it wished to belong to the group of countries which had responsibility for finding a solution. Developing countries too had some responsibility for climate change and an ethical duty to ensure sustainable development.[13]
Nine days later, Carlos Menem told delegates that at the next COP Argentina would make a commitment to cap its emissions for the period 2008 to 2012.[14] ‘This is a major, major move,’ Stuart Eizenstat said in Buenos Aires, ‘truly historic.’[15] Environmentalists were also ecstatic. ‘It is a major breakthrough,’ Michael Oppenheimer of the Environmental Defence Fund said, describing Argentina’s move as ‘a significant first step’ in satisfying the Senate’s requirements.[16]
The next day, Kazakhstan announced that it wanted to join Argentina and voluntarily assume Annex I obligations, which would enable it to sell its surplus emissions as ‘hot air’ to America. It looked like the Americans were on a roll. Speculation had been mounting that the administration would build on the momentum of Argentina’s announcement by signing the Protocol. Senator Byrd, co-sponsor of the Byrd-Hagel resolution, warned Clinton against ‘making empty gestures that will only make the potential future approval of the Protocol by the Senate more difficult.’[17] From Buenos Aires, Senator Liebermann urged Clinton to sign. ‘If we are not at the table, we cannot cajole or convince the developing nations to become part of the solution,’ Liebermann said.[18]
The day after Menem’s speech, Peter Burleigh, America’s acting representative to the United Nations, signed the Kyoto Protocol in New York. Publicly Clinton said nothing. Instead a statement was put out on behalf of Vice President Gore. Signing Kyoto imposed no obligations on the US, the statement said. ‘We will not submit the Protocol for ratification without the meaningful participation of key developing countries in efforts to address climate change.’[19]
The downbeat spin in Washington contrasted with the stir it created in Buenos Aires. ‘I am not gilding the lily when I say there was near euphoria among the delegates here,’ Eizenstat told the New York Times.[20] Lieberman said it gave America the credibility to be at the table. ‘That means we can not only make sure it happens, but that it happens in the way that we prefer.’[21] Hagel dared Clinton to invite the Senate to ratify it. ‘If this treaty is good enough to sign, it’s good enough to be submitted to the Senate for an open, honest debate.’[22]
Clinton avoided battle on the Senate floor. Instead Buenos Aires marked the furthest extent of the Clinton administration’s global warming diplomacy. Like Napoleon’s defeat at Borodino, it was the start of a two-year retreat. Argentina and Kazakhstan could announce their intention to assume Annex I obligations, but there was no mechanism in the Protocol for them formally to do so. Agreeing a mechanism required consensus. Consensus, or rather the lack of it, was like General Winter to the retreating French; not an outcome decided in pitched battle, but worn down through steady attrition. By the time the administration had signed the treaty, the battle was already lost, defeat being confirmed at the conference closing plenary two days later.
At the start of COP4, there was a battle on whether voluntary commitments should be on the conference agenda. Speaking on behalf of the G77 plus China, Indonesia said the issue had been deliberated at length, but no consensus had been reached and proposed the agenda be adopted without it. India recalled the debate at Kyoto which had rejected the idea of voluntary commitments. A number of OPEC members warned that such a discussion was bound to be divisive and could lead to the imposition of voluntary commitments. China said developed countries’ ‘luxury’ emissions were rising and that voluntary commitments would create a new category of parties under the convention.
Speaking in favour were Australia, Japan, Canada, New Zealand and the EU, which recognised that the question of broadening commitments in the long-term was necessary and unavoidable. Of the non-Annex I nations, only Chile spoke in support. The agenda was adopted without the proposed item.[23]
Two days later, the conference discussed the adequacy of commitments of both Annex I and non-Annex I parties to attain the convention’s objective. The first review had been three years earlier and had resulted in the Berlin Mandate. Article 4.2(d) of the convention required a second review not later than 31st December 1998 (and thereafter at regular intervals). The article, suggested by American negotiators, was meant to be a periodic spur; without extending commitments beyond the Annex I parties, it was numerically impossible to stabilise greenhouse gas concentrations and thus achieve the convention’s objective.[24]
The G77 plus China said that there was consensus that existing commitments were inadequate, as developed countries were shirking their responsibilities. The issue was passed to a contact group which met over the weekend. This failed to produce agreement other than to remit four different drafts to another body, this time the Subsidiary Body on Implementation. The US and Australia noted that the IPCC’s evaluation confirmed that developed country actions by themselves would be insufficient, while China interpreted this as an attempt to extract commitments from developing countries. On the Tuesday (the COP was due to finish at the end of the week), the Canadian co-chair of the contact group reported that they agreed that commitments were inadequate, but not on the reasons or on any actions that might be required.[25]
At the COP final plenary two days after America had signed the Protocol, Alsogaray reported that the parties had not been able to review the adequacy of commitments as required by the convention.
The issue was left for COP5 in October 1999 in Bonn.
As with COP4, settling the agenda was the first issue for COP5. The draft agenda included the Article 4.2(d) adequacy review. Again, the G77 plus China objected. This time it wanted the wording of the item changed from ‘adequacy of commitments’ to ‘adequacy of their implementation’, changing the sense and purpose of the review requirement in the convention. After what many had felt to be a difficult COP in Buenos Aires, delegations experienced, in the words of convention secretary Zammit Cutajar, an unexpected mood of optimism, a mood bought at the cost of not attempting to resolve divisive issues. On the final day of the COP, the conference president, Poland’s Jan Szyszko, said no agreement had been reached to resolve the adequacy review, recorded China’s amendment, and gavelled the decision, saying the item would be taken up at COP6.[26]
A similar fate befell Kazakhstan’s attempt to join Annex I. While Argentina announced its adoption of voluntary greenhouse gas growth targets, it had backed down from trying to change its non-Annex I status.[27] In response to the EU’s suggestion of agreeing to increasing global participation after the first 2008-2012 commitment period, China said it would not undertake commitments
until it achieved ‘medium development level’.[28] (By 2008, China’s per capita carbon dioxide emissions were above the world average.[29] Reinstein recalls a comment by China in one of the last sessions of the INC negotiating the convention: ‘China will always be a developing country,’ which he interpreted not as a statement about China’s economic aspirations but as a firewall against China being dragged into OECD-like commitments.)[30]
Although Kazakhstan’s proposal to join Annex I was supported by a number of Annex I parties, several non-Annex I countries said they did not have enough information on whether Kazakhstan could fulfil its obligations. There was no consensus and the COP decided that the issue should be taken up by COP6.
So on it rolled. The US, supported by Canada, Australia and New Zealand, pressed for COP6 to be held in early 2001, after the American elections. The G77 plus China pushed for November; the decision going their way.
The Hague COP6 was held six days after the disputed presidential election and Florida’s hanging chads. The American team at The Hague did not know whether Al Gore or George W. Bush, who had spoken against Kyoto in the election, would be taking office in January. The attempt to get some evidence of future commitments from non-Annex I countries was now all but over. The draft agenda was adopted except for the item on the second review of the adequacy of commitments. No consensus on the matter had been found by the end of the COP, the G77 plus China saying the topic was sensitive so it would be better not to discuss it further.[31]
Instead the American side had to contain a counter-attack from the EU which in American eyes amounted to an attempt to reopen the basis of the deal struck at Kyoto. They also had to contend with a noisy NGO participation that stormed a meeting with locked arms and refused to leave.[32] Something was thrown at Loy. Wiping cake from his face, Loy reminded everyone that the day was the anniversary of the assassination of President Kennedy, who had urged Americans not to be swayed by those ‘confusing rhetoric with reality’.[33]
The air of unreality at The Hague started with the reading of some poems by the Dutch poet laureate.
He lost his way within a maze
In search of silver and of gold –
He searched a lifetime and he found
He was where he’d been from of old
Presumably it sounded better in Dutch. Much discussion revolved around sinks. Jan Pronk, the Dutch president of COP6, recalled lengthy debates about the definition of a sink, the definition of a forest and even the definition of a tree. When is a tree a tree? ‘All this went on year after year, month after month, seminar after seminar, workshop after workshop, conference after conference. And during the conferences and negotiations themselves, day after day, hour after hour, night after night,’ Pronk recounted.[34]
Since Kyoto, European politics had turned deep green. Helmut Kohl lost the 1998 federal elections and was replaced by a Red-Green coalition led by Gerhard Schröder, Merkel being succeeded by the Green Jürgen Trittin. He joined Dominique Voynet, the environment minister in Lionel Jospin’s government and one of the founders of the Greens in France. Trittin and Voynet constituted a Green motor at the heart of Europe. Instead of defining the precise rules and mechanisms needed to implement Kyoto, COP6 was to be Europe’s hour when it cleansed Kyoto of its loopholes and forced rich countries (i.e., America) to face up to their responsibilities and cut their own emissions, rather than buy up poorer countries’ emissions allowances.
France held the EU’s rotating presidency. President Chirac’s speech to the conference was a call to arms against the common enemy – America. There was no doubt that global warning had set in, he said. Without action, there would be dreadful consequences – rising sea levels, floods, extinctions of plants and animals, storms, typhoons, cyclones, hurricanes, the spread of deserts and the emergence of environmental refugees. ‘That is why, I can confirm to you here, Europe is resolved to act and has mobilised to fight the greenhouse effect.’
While acknowledging President Clinton’s personal commitment, Chirac reminded the conference that each American emits three times more greenhouse gases than a Frenchman. ‘It is in the Americans, in the first place, that we place our hopes of effectively limiting greenhouse gas emissions on a global scale.’ The bulk of efforts in meeting the Kyoto targets should be through efforts to curb domestic and regional emissions. Flexibility mechanisms were a complement: ‘They should definitely not be seen as a means of escape.’ For the first time, he declared, humanity was instituting a genuine instrument of global governance. ‘If the South lacks the capacity to act, the North all too often lacks the will.’[35]
Battle was joined over sinks such as forests and how they should be counted in reducing countries’ emissions. Doing so reopened the basis on which the emissions numbers had been agreed. ‘We went to Kyoto intending to accept a target of no reduction from 1990 levels, but we ended up with a seven per cent reduction,’ Loy explained a couple of months after the conference. ‘One of the ways we were able to justify that to ourselves was that there was a provision for sinks.’[36] (It’s also worth recalling that, at Kyoto, the EU moved from its opening position of a fifteen per cent cut to eight per cent, but on more generous accounting.) The same went for America’s ability to use the Protocol’s flexibility mechanisms to meet its target. ‘We would not have signed it if they hadn’t been in there,’ Loy commented.[37]
The treatment of sinks deadlocked the conference. John Prescott, the most thoughtful and realistic of the Europeans according to Loy, tried to broker a deal.[38] The deal fell apart after Voynet took it to other EU environment ministers. It led to a spectacular falling out between her and Prescott. Voynet accused the former seaman of behaving like an ‘inveterate macho’ after Prescott had complained that Voynet had scuppered a deal because she had got cold feet and was tired and exhausted. ‘I did not say the lady was tired,’ Prescott told the House of Commons. ‘She constantly said it herself. She was too tired to take in all the complexities. I quoted her words.’[39]
Less than three weeks after COP6 flamed out, the Supreme Court declared George W. Bush the next president.
During the last three years of his presidency, Clinton was deeply engaged on global warming. His final State of the Union message in January 2000 described global warming as the greatest environmental challenge of the new century. ‘If we fail to reduce the emission of greenhouse gases, deadly heat waves and droughts will become more frequent, coastal areas will flood, and economies will be disrupted. That is going to happen, unless we act,’ Clinton warned.[40]
He seems to have believed it. In a conversation with President Jiang Zemin two years before Kyoto, Clinton told the Chinese leader that he didn’t want to contain China:
‘The biggest security threat China presents the United States is that you will insist on getting rich the same way we did.’ And he looked at me, and I could tell he had never thought of that. And I said, ‘You have to choose a different future, and we have to help. We have to support you. And that does not in any way let us off the hook. But it just means that we have to do this together.’[41]
At the White House global warming wonkfest in October 1997, where he recalled the conversation, Clinton showed an easy mastery of the policy implications across all its dimensions, ranging from the apparent paradox of more droughts and more floods, to policy mistakes in the 1970s that stopped gas-fired power stations (the federal government had grossly underestimated domestic natural gas reserves – his Democrat predecessor, Jimmy Carter, had a big hand in that), to it being better to recover waste heat from electricity generation and to encourage consumer conservation than to force electricity companies to change their power plants.
Of course, Clinton understood the politics better than anyone else in the room: ‘Number one, we can’t get to the green line unless there is a global agreement that involves both the developing and the developed countries.’[42] In his post-Kyoto tes
timony, Eizenstat told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that the problem of global warming could not be solved unless developing countries got on board. By around 2015, China would be the largest overall emitter of greenhouse gases and by 2025 the developing world would be emitting more greenhouse gases in total than the developed world.[43] He was right, but underestimated the speed at which it was happening. China overtook the US in 2007, eight years before Eizenstat predicted, and non-Annex I emissions overtook Annex I emissions in 2008, seventeen years before Eizenstat thought they would.[44]
Administration officials believed if they could come back with a reasonable regime that included the larger developing country emitters, they would be able to get the Senate to go along with it. To succeed, they needed to breach the new Berlin wall. In retrospect, Loy believes that agreeing the Berlin Mandate was a serious mistake. Rio had got it more right, but the Berlin Mandate had hardened the structure into a bifurcated regime.[45]
Although global warming was a priority towards the end of Clinton’s presidency, it wasn’t at the beginning. National prosperity, social progress and the longest period of economic growth in America’s history topped the list of administration accomplishments in his final State of the Union message. Like Thatcher a decade before, who had championed the environment in her last two years in Downing Street, fixing the economy was what Clinton was elected to do. If Clinton had emulated Carter, more likely than not, he would also have been a one-term president.
The Age of Global Warming: A History Page 30