USA: Bush surrenders to big business over Kyoto
Exxon oil company is one of the USA’s biggest multinationals and polluters. It led US business resistance to the Kyoto climate change agreement. It also helped bankroll President George W Bush’s election campaign last year.
So no surprise that it is pay back time. Bush has given his oil business backers what they wanted: tearing up the agreement on cutting carbon dioxide emissions; Bush said it will "harm the US economy".
By which he means that the costs of making the world cleaner will not be borne by the people who created the pollution in the first place. In fact US multinationals do not want to be tied to regulations which require more of US companies than European or Japanese companies since the US is least energy efficient of any of the big capitalist nations.
With 5 per cent of the world’s population the US emits almost a quarter of the world’s carbon dioxide, the main climate changing gas. At Kyoto the US administration agreed to cut emissions by 7 per cent over 1990 levels by 2012. In fact emissions rose by more than 10 per cent in the 1990s.
Clinton was no better; his administration’s intransigence caused the Hague climate talks to collapse. Given Bush is in hock to the oil companies it will get worse not better since the oil barons have targeted the virgin lands of Alaska as the next big reserve to exploit and pollute.
A recent report by the United Nations Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change warns that the earth may warm up by as much as six degrees Celsius during the present century, which is double previous estimates. This means ocean levels could rise by more than 50cm, threatening many islands and large swathes of coastal areas in China, south-east Asia and Africa.
Low-lying island states, in particular, insist the issue of cutting emissions is not just a matter of economics but one of sheer survival.
The great majority of scientists now accept that gases produced by burning fossil fuels such as oil are warming the planet, disrupting the climate and damaging the environment.
In 1992 at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) was opened for signature. This expressed concern about the effects of climate change - desertification of former agricultural zones, the destruction of forests, the melting of polar ice caps and rising sea levels.
Throughout the negotiations in Hague the EU painted themselves as the guardians of the environment. They have been arguing that at least half of all cuts must be made in domestic emissions and pressing for increased cuts.
However as in previous negotiations they can talk green safe in the knowledge that the Americans will never agree and then happily accept a much watered down deal. If you want evidence of that you only have to look at the British government's enthusiasm over the economic benefits of emission trading.
The sheer economic might of the USA and its multinational corporations ensured that no serious commitment to fight global warming emerged from The Hague. This is why environmental degradation is such a key issue for the developing "anti-capitalist movement".
It is one of the issues – along with third world debt, the destruction of wage levels and social services by neo-liberalism, the domination of all aspects of life by the mega-corporations – that is waking up millions of people to the fact that to save our planet, as well as to ensure a decent life for its inhabitants CAPITALISM HAS TO GO!
The big heat: how capitalism is cooking the earth