JayStream

A few years ago while visiting Europe, I was privileged to attend a public forum on climate change. Several prominent scientists answered questions from informed citizens on the topic of what individuals could do about global warming. One recurring theme was whether people in that country should bother reducing carbon emissions if the United States continued to ignore international climate change efforts. To be honest, I felt a little embarrassed – although over the years I have often seen global warming used as an issue with which to bash America.

Today, London’s The Independent newspaper kicked off a series of news articles previewing the Copenhagen conference to be held in December. The conference is expected to produce a Kyoto-like treaty that will impose limits on emissions of carbon dioxide. Unlike Kyoto, this time America is very likely to sign agreement to the treaty. President Obama’s goal is to lower US carbon emissions by 2020 -  the same level of emissions we had in 1990.

But the article contained two statistics that have received little or no attention. One is that the United States is no longer the world’s top carbon polluter. China currently emits 6.018 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide, surpassing America’s 5.903 billion metric tons. It is interesting that if the 2001 Kyoto accord been adopted by the United States, this country would have been working under restrictive regulations for the past several years – while China was expanding its economy at will. The Kyoto treaty mostly exempted China because it was considered a developing nation.

I am certain many critics would respond that China has 1.3 billion people; so it might be justified in emitting more carbon dioxide than the United States, which has only 304 million people. But before we start to feel guilt for our prosperity, we should think about the second key statistic in the article.

When you compare nations based upon the amount of carbon dioxide emitted per person, the United States again comes in second. Australia emits 20.58 metric tons of CO2 per person, followed by the US at 19.78 metric tons per person, and Canada and Saudia Arabia at 18.81 and 15.7 metric tons per capita respectively.

While I truly respect and cherish other countries, I wish they would stop blaming all the world’s carbon pollution on the United States. Despite their “green” rhetoric, when other industrialized nations point fingers at us for global CO2 concentrations – we could point a finger back.

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Shortly after the conclusion of British Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s speech to the US Congress, the afternoon newspapers hit the stands in his home country. The front page of the London Evening Standard screamed, “Brown tells US: Save our Planet.” As if merely rescuing the world’s economy isn’t a tough enough task.

It seems curious that as the American people believe the president is focused like a laser beam on financial issues, other nations are seizing on President Obama’s climate change initiatives. They see what the American media has largely ignored – the president’s stimulus and spending bills include easter eggs in the form of climate change legislation.

For example, President Obama claims, despite the current “throw money at everything” approach, that he will simultaneously reduce a suddenly enormous federal deficit to $600 billion by 2012. Part of the way he plans to do it is by charging a huge new tax on people and industries that produce anything. It is called “cap and trade,” and will force everyone who emits any carbon dioxide into the air to purchase – at auction – the right to do so. Obama says this tax will bring $79 billion into government coffers in its first year, and $646 Billion by 2019. The same companies that are supposed to find money to pay workers must also find money to pay this confiscatory new environmental tax.

President Obama’s pronouncements have emboldened Green movements in other countries. The idea of a carbon tax has been bouncing around Europe for some time. But the newspaper, Les Echos, recently reported that, “L’idee de taxe carbone fait son chemin”, or “The idea of a carbon tax is gaining” in France. The article starts out by saying the concept is welcomed by Greens, and is a “reflection of Barack Obama.”

Twelve years after the US Senate passed a resolution opposing the Kyoto Treaty 95-0, there is now international expection that President Obama will not only concede to the wishes of other nations, but actually lead efforts to cut greenhouse gas emissions. An article in the South China Morning Post expects that a global climate change treaty will be settled in Copenhagen by the end of the year. Even China, which was largely exempt from Kyoto because it was considered an underdeveloped nation, seems willing sign a treaty to reduce its carbon emissions. But according to the Morning Post article, “the US, in Beijing’s view, has a moral obligation to make much deeper cuts, much sooner, than China.”

Right now, you would have to say President Obama appears inclined to do just that.

UPDATE 3/6/09: The following was printed in an analysis piece by a reporter based in England and printed in the The Standard and several other newspapers throughout Canada on 3/6/09:

A U.S.-China deal must include … much stronger emission curbs in the U.S. than in China in the early stages, technological help and largescale American investment in clean Chinese energy sources, and probably a carbon-trading deal as well. But if it can be done, it will provide the template on which other industrialized and industrializing countries can join up to a global deal for steep emissions cuts in Copenhagen.

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