September 4, 2002

Ten years after the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, the United Nations is convening the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg, South Africa, August 26-September 4, 2002 — and the outlook is grim.[1]

Certainly, improvements can be cited, but even putting the best face on it, progress has been almost exclusively in the areas of agreements and planning.[2] Optimistic goals for actually reversing global warming, species extinction, and the wasting of natural resources have not been met."[3]

And, "The kinds of targets and agreements being negotiated are being undercut and made meaningless by the U.S. refusal to participate," according to Philip Clapp, president of the Washington-based National Environmental Trust.[4]

The fact remains that the earth is still on a collision course with disaster. Fossil fuel emissions have grown about 10 percent worldwide and a whopping 18 percent in the United States. Three-quarters of the world"s fisheries are overfished, forests have shrunk by an area the size of Texas and Louisiana combined, extreme weather is increasingly blamed on global warming, and rare habitats are disappearing so quickly that some scientists believe the planet is entering its first major extinction since the dinosaur age.[5]

Some environmentalists say the window of opportunity for solving global problems such as climate change and the loss of biodiversity, forests, and fisheries is closing fast, and that if ways are not found to reverse the current trends, the next generation may inherit a significantly degraded world.[6]

"Not everything was rosy at Rio," said Christopher Flavin, president of the Worldwatch Institute, an environmental advocacy group. "But there wasn't the sense that we have today. If we don't get something done and if we have a few more unfortunate developments, things around the world could be unraveling."[7]

UN Undersecretary General Nitin Desai, who will lead the Summit, recently warned that if the Summit is a failure, "we will not have another chance."[8] "There is a real sense of urgency," Desai said. "The fact is that [since Rio] progress is slipping backward."[9]

And the United States — consuming 25% of the world's resources[10] and outputting 25% of greenhouse gases[11] — is the proverbial elephant in the sandbox and is refusing to play nicely.[12]

"What are we going to do about the United States?" worried Emil Salim, chairperson for the Preparatory Committee gathering in Bali in May.[13] He couldn't have intended that the nearby microphone would broadcast his question to the roomful of international diplomats — but now it was out. And Salim had good reason to worry:

Because President Bush chose not to attend, the U.S. delegation, led by Secretary of State Colin Powell, made clear in pre-Summit meetings that it would not sign any new agreements, and in fact would prefer to overturn many of those reached at Rio.[14]

"This Summit is taking place in the shadow of U.S. unilateralism," according to Jonathan Lash, head of the Washington-based World Resources Institute. "In an era of global problems that require global collaboration, the U.S. appears to have declared it won't collaborate. It has made clear that it will commit no new resources, enter into no new agreements, and provide no leadership."[15]

And although the goal of the Johannesburg Summit is sustainable development rather than protection of the environment, and such contentious issues (to President Bush) as global warming are off the table,[16] development can only be sustainable if the environment is sustainable.[17]

What can President Bush be thinking? And how is his opposition responding?

First, Bush and his administration say they are doing good job in caring for the environment and in addressing the sustainable development goals of the Johannesburg Summit.

"The Bush administration is committed to its success," according to assistant Secretary of State John Turner's Senate testimony of July 24.[18]

"The preparations and the U.S. strategy have had the attention at the highest level within the White House," according to a senior Bush administration official. "It's something that strikes at the core values of the President."[19]

One U.S. official said, "We have a very good record, both to talk about and to demonstrate. There is a need to explain. On climate change, we have a common goal, but we have a difference of opinion as to how to get from here to there."[20]

President Bush has set a voluntary target to reduce "greenhouse gas intensity" by 18% for the nation over the next decade.[21]

However, according to the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, an 18 percent reduction in emissions intensity between now and 2012 will allow actual emissions to increase another 12 percent over the same period — nearly the same rate as at present.[22]

In response, Senators Joseph Lieberman (D-CT) and John McCain (R-AZ) have called for legislation to cap greenhouse gas emissions, paired with an allowance trading system, in order to encourage innovation for reducing emissions. "This is a win-win approach for the environment and for American industry," Lieberman said.

"The current situation demands leadership from the United States," McCain said. "We should reward improvements in energy efficiency, encourage advances in energy technologies, and improve land-use practices. Deploying the power of a marketplace to pursue the least expensive answers is a unique and powerful American approach to the threat of climate change."[23]

Instead, the U.S. is patching together an aid package valued at almost $4.5 billion to announce in Johannesburg, including $970 million over three years for water projects. But much of the money has simply been diverted from previously announced programs.[24]

Furthermore, aid would be contingent upon how effective recipient countries were at fighting corruption and improving their governing.[25]

Senator John Kerry (D-MA), when briefed on the package, said, "What passes for their agenda — shifting funds from existing efforts and giving it a new name — sends a clear signal: The world's largest polluter isn't interested in finding a solution to global warming."[26]

Second, the Bush administration doesn't consider environmental issues to be a political priority, either domestically or globally.[27]

"This administration is intent on maintaining the loyalty of the base of support," says Eileen Claussen, president of the Pew Center for Global Climate Change. "And that [base] is not pro-environmental in any way."[28]

Bush's main supporters do not see attention to environmental issues as being in their interests. Many U.S. Republicans see the Summit as promoting a leftist agenda, including increased aid for developing nations.[29]

World Wide Fund for Nature's climate change expert Stephan Singer parried, "We hope Americans will give their response to this in the next elections."[30]

Globally, critics see the United States' lack of engagement as isolationist and out of step with world concerns:[31] "The efforts of the United States to mobilize against terrorism would be helped immeasurably if we were part of a broad coalition to address sustainable development," said World Wildlife Fund vice president Brooks Yeager.[32]

Instead, the President headed for vacation on his Texas ranch. And even Greenpeace climate policy advisor Steve Sawyer sounded sympathetic: "He'll be pilloried if he does come and pilloried if he doesn't."[33]

Third, they assert that market forces and voluntary incentives can solve the environmental problems that they do acknowledge — and that mandatory controls would be disastrous for the economy.

Big business has too big a presence at the Summit, complain some activists. But others say that it is not all a public relations exercise and that some firms have started to recognize the need to tackle poverty and environmental degradation. The real concern should be about the companies not represented.[34]

"We're doing this because we're not stupid," said Felix de Bulhoes, chairman of Brazil's 60-member Business Council on Sustainable Development. "Because if we don't change, markets won't develop and there's no such thing as a successful company in a bankrupt market."[35]

On the first day of informal negotiations at the Summit, Friends of the Earth International, Greenpeace, and Third World Network obtained a leaked copy of a joint US/EU negotiating paper, which they said threatened to turn the Earth Summit process from sustainable development into a trade Summit.[36]

And Sierra Club international program director Stephen Mills declared, "There's … an effort by the administration to turn this conference about protecting the environment and reducing poverty into a conference about trade."[37]

And the Bush administration appears to confirm that: Paula Dobriansky, U.S. Undersecretary for Global Affairs, said the United States expected the Summit to pick up where two others — a trade gathering in Doha, Qatar, and a development Summit in Monterrey, Mexico— left off.[38]

The Summit is expected to bless "partnerships" between governments, companies, and other groups to get together to solve problems.[39] Involving private companies, said one senior U.S. official, would open the door to "hundreds of billions" of dollars in investment.[40]

Some environmentalists say such partnerships are likely to become more common, having received support within the United Nations. But many are nonetheless skeptical, saying that broad international agreements are still needed to meet specific targets on issues such as pollution and poverty.[41] Others assert that the alliances could be a backdoor for governments to shirk responsibility and give big business opportunities to profit from expensive, privatized services ranging from water supply to electricity.[42]

"This idea of corporate self-policing doesn't work," said Sierra Club's Mills flatly.[43]

Greenpeace's Sawyer was even more blunt: "U.S. environmental policy has been atrocious, retrograde, and unfitting of a country that claims any type of moral political leadership in the world."[44]

Even Mark Moody-Stuart, former chief executive of Royal Dutch Shell, who heads the main industry lobby at the Summit, said that climate change was one of the few areas where international rules were essential.[45]

Bush supporters question whether the Johannesburg Summit is even constructive at all. For example, Competitive Enterprise Institute President Fred L. Smith, Jr., and 30 other self-proclaimed "free market leaders" wrote in a recent joint letter to President Bush: "Even more than the Earth Summit in Rio in 1992, the Johannesburg Summit will provide a global media stage for many of the most irresponsible and destructive elements involved in critical international economic and environmental issues. Your presence would only help to publicize and make more credible their various anti-freedom, anti-people, anti-globalization, and anti-Western agendas."[46]

Even if these assertions were true, some observers have already labeled the event "Joburg Lite" because the watered-down agenda going into the meeting — clean air, pure water, and prosperity for all — lacks both substance and consensus on how to achieve it.[47]

And finally, they question the science.

This past June, Bush distanced himself from a report, put out by his own administration, concluding that humans were to blame for far-reaching effects of global warming on the environment.[48]

The report, drafted by the Environmental Protection Agency, reviewed by several other agencies and the White House, and submitted to the United Nations, said that the United States would be substantially changed in the next few decades by global warming.[49]

Ari Fleischer, Bush's spokesman, said, "There is 'considerable uncertainty' — that's in this recent report — relating to the science of climate change. This report submitted to the United Nations also recognizes that any 'definitive prediction of potential outcomes is not yet feasible' and that 'one of the weakest links in our knowledge is the connection between global and regional predictions of climate change.'"[50]

Last year, the Bush administration walked away from the Kyoto agreement to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases,[51] stating that carbon dioxide was not a problem.[52] The global community erupted in criticism.[53]

Bush's rejection of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol seemed to be a combination of all the above factors: His solution — his way of taking care of the environment — is through voluntary, incentive-based emissions reductions. But those reductions could be illusory, say critics, if the economy grows to expected levels.[54]

Breaking his campaign promise to limit carbon dioxide emissions[55] demonstrates implicitly how low Bush prioritizes the constituency that would vote for that.

On the economic front, Bush claims that the treaty would cost the U.S. economy $400 billion and 4.9 million jobs.[56] Critics claim that new jobs in resultant technologies will balance the losses.[57]

And his excuse — that carbon dioxide was not considered a pollutant under the Clean Air Act, leans on a technicality to reject global scientific consensus.[58]

What is the science?

"If awards were given for the most difficult grass-roots environmental campaign, global warming would probably win. Unlike with land preservation or pesticides, people have a difficult time seeing a direct link between their lives and the slow warming of the earth," Beth Daley writes in the Boston Globe.[59]

Timothy Egan writes in the New York Times: "In Alaska, rising temperatures, whether caused by greenhouse gas emissions or nature in a prolonged mood swing, are not a topic of debate or an abstraction. Mean temperatures have risen by 5 degrees in summer and 10 degrees in winter since the 1970s, federal officials say.

"While President Bush was dismissive of a report the government recently released on how global warming will affect the nation, the leading Republican in this state, Senator Ted Stevens, says that no place is experiencing more startling change from rising temperatures than Alaska."[60] The remainder of Egan's article is a long and horrific litany of the damage being done in Alaska by heat, insects, and rising water.

In the Washington Post, William Booth cites an equally long list about the drought across the whole United States.[61]

The devastating floods this summer in central Europe are a wake-up call on climate change, says Robert Watson, now the World Bank's chief scientist since he was ousted from the chair of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPPC) in April due to U.S. opposition.

"You don't have to identify each event with climate change. All you have to say is this is the type of world that may become more prevalent," he told reporters at the Earth Summit.[62]

Indeed, while most scientific measurements can claim definitive precision, a new analysis of climate data over more than 100 years suggests that finding the hottest or coldest day, week, or year is far less precise. "The public needs to understand how difficult it is to find scientifically reliable long-term climate data just for one spot in the U.S., where we have extensive networks of weather stations and careful data storage," says Dr. John Christy, Alabama's state climatologist.[63] Hence, there has been room for argument.

However, climatologist John Church of CSIRO, Australia's largest research agency, asserts that there is little evidence to justify the view that the jury is still out on global warming. "There are very few credible skeptics out there," Dr. Church said. "The overwhelming evidence is that climate change is occurring and it's the result of human activities." And, he says, it will continue to accelerate if nothing is done.[64]

Jonathan Lash, of the World Resources Institute says, "There's considerable consensus among most of the nations attending about the connection between human well-being and large-scale environmental problems."[65]

As head of the IPPC, Robert Watson predicted the Earth's temperature could rise by up to 5.8 degrees Celsius (10.4° Fahrenheit) over the coming century, a change that he says would lead to more extreme weather patterns,[66] sea level increases of up to 35 feet, and accelerated spread of diseases such as malaria and dengue fever.[67]

Besides the floods which swept across Europe this month, hundreds have died as torrential rain hit China, Nepal, Iran, and the Philippines in recent weeks.

Watson said that as the globe heats up, rainfall will become heavier and more frequent in areas where it already rains a lot, while arid areas will suffer from more droughts.

On the positive side, crop yields would increase in more temperate zones, such as Europe and North America, but this would be offset by a decrease in the tropical zones where many of the world's poor live.[68]

What to do?

Climate change is a reality. Scientific opinion generally accepts that rising levels of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere will cause significant changes to global climate patterns. Tom Delay suggests in the Financial Times, "If companies can join scientists in tackling climate change, they may find a host of viable business opportunities. And seizing those opportunities now makes business sense."[69]

U.S. Representative George Brown says, "The political dispute over policies to avert global warming is not fundamentally about science: it is about morality. It is about a vision of the future that requires collaboration and cooperation of all peoples to ensure our global security. It is about our obligation … to help preserve the global environment and to promote health, education, economic opportunity, and freedom for everyone on the planet and for the generations that follow. … The time is ripe for … us to make the leap beyond narrow self-interest and understand a new reality: that we are all inextricably linked together on this planet, and that the welfare of the whole is of the highest importance."[70]

And Andrew Simms writes in The Guardian, "Now is the time for rich to match poor's generosity. If you change the accounting system to measure what really matters, such as whether or not the environmental budget is balanced, Europe and the U.S. look hopelessly indebted."[71]


Footnotes

1. Laurie Goering. "Outlook dim for Earth Summit" Chicago Tribune Online Edition. August 25, 2002: http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/showcase/chi-0208250336aug25.story?coll=chi-news-hed

2. "Johannesburg Summit 2002: Facts about Progress Since the Earth Summit": http://www.johannesburgSummit.org/html/media_info/pressreleases_factsheets/wssd2_progress_rio.pdf

3. "'Sense of urgency' spurs World Summit" The Charlotte Observer, Aug. 25, 2002: http://www.charlotte.com/mld/observer/news/editorial/3933664.htm

4. The National Environmental Trust: http://environet.policy.net; see reference 1.

5. See reference 1.

6. Ibid.

7. See reference 3.

8. See reference 1.

9. See reference 3.

10. Seed: Science Scene: http://www.seedmagazine.com/joburg/p1.html

11. Senator John McCain Press Release "Lieberman, McCain Call for Climate Change Legislation": http://mccain.senate.gov/captrade.htm

12. "U.S. braced for bruising at Summit." MSNBC: http://www.msnbc.com/news/797465.asp

13. See reference 10.

14. See reference 1.

15. Ibid.

16. "Earth Summit documents lack bite, experts say." Planet Ark, August 22, 2002: http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17391/story.htm

17. Jodie Ginsberg. "Business buys into earth Summit, but at what price." Planet Ark, August 20, 2002 http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17363/story.htm

18. Randall Mikkelsen. "Bush Set to Skip Earth Summit." Yahoo Politics, August 12, 2002: http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&cid=615&u=/nm/20020813/pl_nm/environment_Summit_bush_dc_1&printer=1

19. Ibid.

20. See reference 12; see reference 10.

21. See reference 10.

22. "Pew Center Analysis of President Bush's February 14th Climate Change Plan." Pew Center on Global Climate Change: http://www.pewclimate.org/policy/response_bushpolicy.cfm]

23. See reference 11.

24. John King. "Bush reverses position on emissions reductions," CNN Inside Politics, March 13, 2001: http://www.cnn.com/2001/ALLPOLITICS/03/13/power.plant.emissions/; see reference 12.

25. Ibid.

26. See reference 12.

27. See reference 10.

28. Ibid.

29. "Bush scorned for skipping Earth Summit." Planet Ark, August 22, 2002: http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17403/story.htm]

30.Ibid.

31. See reference 18; see reference 29.

32. See King, reference 24; see reference 10.

33. See reference 18.

34. See reference 17.

35. Ibid.

36. "Free trade takeover of the Earth Summit," From Rio to Jo'burg. Friends of the Earth International: http://www.rio-plus-10.org/en/press/90.php

37. See reference 18.

38. See reference 12.

39. Alister Doyle. "Big business accused of derailing Earth Summit" Planet Ark, August 29, 2002: http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17481/story.htm

40. See reference 18; see reference 10.

41. See reference 18.

42. See reference 39.

43. See reference 18.

44. Ibid.

45. Robin Pomeroy "Interview - Big business needs Kyoto, says industry chief." Planet Ark, August 29, 2002: http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17489/story.htm

46. Competitive Enterprise Institute http://www.cei.org/dyn/newscenter.cfm; Ian Willmore. "Follow the money." The Guardian Observer, Sunday August 18, 2002: http://observer.co.uk/worldview/story/0,11581,775213,00.html

47. See King, reference 24; see reference 16.

48. Katharine Q. Seelye. "President Distances Himself From Global Warming Report." New York Times On-Line, June 5, 2002: http://www.nytimes.com/2002/06/05/politics/05CLIM.html

49. Ibid.

50. Ibid.

51. See reference 12.

52. See King, reference 24.

53. See reference 12.

54. See reference 3.

55. See King, reference 24.

56. Ibid.

57. theClimate.info: http://www.manoman.com/theclimate/

58. See King, reference 24; The National Environmental Trust: http://environet.policy.net/warming/emissions.pdf

59. See reference 57.

60. Timothy Egan. "Alaska, No Longer So Frigid, Starts to Crack, Burn and Sag." New York Times, June 13, 2002: http://www.nytimes.com/2002/06/16/national/16ALAS.html

61. William Booth. "The Nation's Other, Slower Burn: Wildfires Are a Symptom of a Bigger Problem" The Washington Post, July 3, 2002: http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A16316-2002Jul2¬Found=true

62. "Floods a wake-up call on climate change - scientist." Planet Ark, August 29, 2002: http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17491/story.htm

63. Phillip Gentry. "Raw Empirical Data Not Everything In Climate Study." UniSci: Daily University Science, January 16, 2002: http://unisci.com/stories/20021/0116023.htm

64. "Global Warming Definitely Caused by Humans" ABC News OnLine, May 31, 2002: http://www.abc.net.au/news/scitech/2002/05/item20020530081515_1.htm

65. See reference 1.

66. See reference 62.

67. See reference 11.

68. See reference 62.

69. See reference 57.

70. Representative George Brown, "Mythmakers and Soothsayers: The Science and Politics of Global Change." NATO/Duke University School of the Environment Workshop on Global Change Integrated Risk Assessment, October 15, 1995: http://www.house.gov/science_democrats/speeches/globalch.htm

71. Andrew Simms. "Now is the time for rich to match poor's generosity." The Guardian, August 27, 2002: http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,780959,00.html