Gore gets cold shoulder in Kyoto: Developing nations say no to global warming fears

The world’s innocents dodged a bullet — temporarily at least. Negotiators in the global climate conference held in Kyoto, Japan, over 1–10 December were unable to frame an agreement which contained new population control targets for the developing world. Instead they limited themselves to writing a treaty which could bind industrialized economies into economic knots. If the Senate were to ratify the agreement in its current form, the United States would have to reduce its emissions of carbon dioxide and other so-called “greenhouse gasses” by seven percent from 1990 levels. The European nations pledged to reduce their emissions by 8 percent and Japan by six percent. However, population control opponents should not imagine the battle is won — the Kyoto conference was merely the first round.

Anti-people, anti-technology bias was stirring. Never before had anyone sought a global endorsement of the Malthusian view that the world’s problems stem from too many people, too much consumption, and too much technology. Never before had anyone sought a global repudiation of the idea that economic and technological changes bring more good than ill. As one conference observer, the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s Fred Smith, commented: “Malthus would be surprised at the extent to which his gloomy view of mankind’s future has come to dominate the global policy debate.”

Bad science made good?

Bad, or junk, science marked most of the Kyoto discussions, according to Smith, who led an informal coalition of consumer, scientific and industrial groups opposed to the conference to Kyoto. Smith’s Competitive Enterprise Institute has been a leading think-tank in the debate, rallying members of the scientific community who openly question the global warming premise. Smith hoped to carry this science-based opposition into the debate over the treaty itself. As in other UN conferences however, junk scientists and population control supporters were able to ‘freeze out’ any opposing points of view.

During a tour of the conference center Smith and other coalition members came across a draft report listing the ‘Forces of Darkness”‘ which named himself, CEI and other Kyoto opponents. This was, Smith remarked later, “[a] bit unfair since we’re the ones who believe in keeping the light bulbs of the world burning brightly. Then again, objective fairness was never meant to be the hallmark of the Kyoto Conference.”1

Smith reported that the draft described the “*infamous” CEI as no “friend of the earth,” and even accused CEI itself of advocating junk science. Worse, Smith said, the report implied that we are advancing “climate confusionism.” Could this be the application of ancient Eastern philosophy to the issue of global warming, Smith asked.

Other tactics familiar to UN conferences included ejecting Smith and other Kyoto opponents from NGO meetings that were clearly identified as open to the public.2 Finally, towards the end, Smith and coalition members succeeded in provoking an open debate on the issues. Before reporters, conference attendees and cameras, Smith joined David Rothbard, another global warming skeptic, in debating Tony Juniper of Friends of the Earth and Nick Mabey of the WorldWide Fund for nature. “Alas, we contrarians did not convince the environmentalists to remove the gun they hold against the American consumer’s forehead,” Smith wrote later. Nevertheless, he felt opponents put forward a strong moral case against adopting the Kyoto treaty. “Global warming, even if proven correct, will likely be benign and will certainly be a gradual effect occurring only slowly over the next century,” Smith said, adding, “diminished energy choices and higher fuel prices will impose obscene burdens on the world’s poor — immediately.”

Poor nations stand up

The likelihood of diminished economic futures apparently had an impact upon the thinking of many of the developing nations attending the conference. Perhaps more than a few were listening when Mie Asaoka, director of the Japanese environmental organization Kiko Forum, explained the real agenda of the Kyoto climate conference, to the Daily Yomiuri:

We must halt the current worldwide trend of mass-production, mass-consumption, and mass-disposal. Unless we understand that preventing global warming means giving up our current lifestyle, we will fail. The industrial sector claims that mass production is a good thing. But consumption is generated, at least to a certain extent, by mass production… .

Right after World War II, the Japanese were able to maintain a sustainable lifestyle, however poor they were. It was a lifestyle based on coexistence with nature. If we go back further; it is a notable accomplishment that Japan’s unique culture was able to survive intact for 1,000 years. But it seems as though our tradition has vanished during the past 30 years. These changes are a result of the government’s irresponsible policy of letting matters take their own course. We should not let the Kyoto convention fail. We must not postpone the implementation of obligatory measures that emerge from the convention.3

Ms. Asaoka likely does not live with the impoverished conditions her idealism would impose, but people in developing nations do. Almost every representative of a developing country stood up to both the United States and the European Community by refusing to starve their already anemic economies still further. One of the most dramatic points during the proceedings occurred when a delegate from the People’s Republic of China asked Senator Joe Lieberman, a Kyoto supporter, “Do you expect us to keep our people poor? Is that what you want?”

US officials pushed hard to get some commitment from developing nations to the treaty because they knew that without such a commitment the US Senate would never ratify it. US negotiators failure to get such commitments from developing nations likely means that the Administration will not submit the treaty to the Senate for debate until after another round of arm-twisting at the next climate conference in 1998.

One of the odd things about this conference, opponents noted, was the absence of any ministers of national trade or economies, even though the measures being debated promised to have lasting and drastic impacts on world economics and trade. Instead the halls were filled with Ministers of the Environment whose political and bureaucratic powers, to a greater or lesser extent, a strong treaty would strengthen. Whether they grasped the full economic or trade impact of the proposed agreement, however, remained an open question.

The Gore effect

The developing world’s reluctance to commit itself to perpetual poverty led the Administration to put Vice President Gore on Air Force Two. The Vice President, perhaps sensing public ambivalence about “global warming,” had not planned to attend. The discovery that the entire agreement was in jeopardy led to a change of heart. The Vice President hastened to Kyoto, burning more 65,600 gallons of environmentally destructive jet fuel in the process to try and turn the conference around.

Vice President Gore is hugely politically invested in this issue. In late September he specifically linked global warming to population growth,4 urging Americans to get behind the worldwide attack on fertility. Yet politically the topic presents him with many potential pitfalls.

Current environmental procedures — emissions tests on automobiles for example — are wildly unpopular with many average Americans, particularly the working poor who are an essential part of Democratic coalitions. It is one thing when you can pay one hundred dollars to bring your late-model car into compliance with EPA regulations. It is something else when your older car requires $300 to pass, and your modest family budget is already stretched to the limit. Further, most traditionally Democratic labor unions oppose the Kyoto treaty on economic grounds and favor Gore’s likely political rival — House Minority leader Richard Gephardt (D-MO).

These conflicts might explain why so many of the environmentalist ‘true believers’ on hand in Kyoto found the Vice President’s speech lackluster and disappointing. European environmentalists were especially harsh in their assessment, calling the Vice-President a “traitor” and supporter of “Big Oil.” Greenpeace referred to the speech as “full of hot air.” Members of Friends of the Earth read aloud from the Vice President’s previous book, Earth in the Balance, and urged Gore to live up to his avowed gospel.

Instead of a ringing endorsement of supposedly needed changes, Gore spent much of his speech uttering platitudes and ended up announcing he had instructed US negotiators to be more “flexible” in their positions. Thus the stage was set for the US team to abandon its heretofore implacable opposition to rolling back emissions of so-called greenhouse gases by too great a percentage. Still, by advocating an “incremental” approach, conference observers speculated that the Vice-President may have succeeded, for the time being, in “triangulating” his position on the treaty between industrial interests and radical environmentalists. What happens during the long ratification fight is another story.

Mother Nature speaks

The final irony of the Kyoto conference arrived in an unexpected cool snap which put conference organizers in a quandary. Three ice-penguins, carved by environmentalists to melt in the outside air were still standing unfazed on the meeting’s third day. Inside, conference participants were freezing. Should organizers accommodate the needs of the hardworking negotiators and delegates and turn on the heat? Or should they stick by their energy-frugal principles? Principles won out, the heat stayed off, and reporters, delegates and other conference attendees took to wearing coats, scarves and even gloves indoors. What is a little human comfort when the planet is in danger?

Although Kyoto conference results were not as bad as feared — early opposition from the developing nations forestalled any further mischief on population control, for example — population control opponents and other human rights activists must recognize that the war against people continues. The next parts of the battle will concern the treaty itself. During the 1998 climate control conference, the Administration will likely make a pitched effort to get more developing nations to adopt more population-control programs. Until the day that human beings, per se, are not seen as the source of the world’s environmental and other problems, there will be continued attempts to save the earth by attacking its poor.

Endnotes

1 Competitive Enterprise Institute, Kyoto Media Advisory, 3 December 1997.

2 Ibid.

3 As reported by CEI.

4 PRI, Global Monitor. “Apocalyptic infants?” November/December, 1997, page 15.

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