We’re in the summer dog-days of make-believe news, such as Obama’s non-flip-flop on his Iraq position. The media fill days of news cycles with nothing. The winner so far is today’s "pledge" by the G-8 industrialized nations to cut emissions in half by 2050.
Isn’t that convenient? Any action to fulfill this promise would be taken long after the distinguished leaders are gone from office. So it’s meaningless. President Bush continued his seven-and-a-half years of roadblocking action by saying the U.S. would not act unless China and India did. Otherwise, he reasons, it won’t do any good.
Sadly, unless the U.S. leads, the world won’t follow, especially developing nations dependent on coal and wanting to live an American suburban lifestyle. Historians and future generations will look back in anger and disbelief at the wasted years. The economic, social and security consequences of global warming will be unlike anything we have ever faced (say goodbye, for example, to Phoenix). And the White House has actively blocked action, such as California’s emissions restrictions, that would have made a start.
U.S. leadership will make a difference. Not only will it slow emissions from our own huge smokestack of greenhouse gases, but it will launch a cornucopia of new approaches to energy, transportation and living. But maybe we’re not up to the challenge, and maybe the next generations can just suck it up. The rich will be all right. That seems to be the Republican approach.
There are two frictions going on inside the American psyche. One involves the near-constant ideologizing of real-world problems. This is the Reagan hangover where it’s simply holy writ that the environment really doesn’t exist and, as such, there are no problems governments need to address. It’s merely a private matter.
The other is our deep resentment about the pace of globalization and the “threat” it poses to American lifestyles. Right-wing propagandists are geniuses at stoking the bitterness of those who see the Good Life receding from view. Of course, global warming is due, in large part, to our excessive emissions but the costs will be borne disporportionately by pre-industrialized economies. But if you’re having trouble putting gas in your own car, that trumps the life-and-death struggles of nations like Bangla Desh.
The American response will be mediated by how successfully the right has seized the issue’s framing. It’s been noted that many on the right are simply contrarian and oppose issues not on their merits but whether their opposition will somehow enrage liberals. Eventually, this may mean that it will take someone on the right to advance this country’s leadership and resources on the environment. For now, polarization has served the political interests of the right. Most Americans rank global warming far down on their political “to do” list. At some point this may change but the irony is that it may require a right-wing political victory to achieve that.
Two current wire items dovetail nicely into the current blog:
“Vice President Dick Cheney’s office and the White House demanded that all mention of how global warming harms human health be cut from testimony to Congress last fall, a former Environmental Protection Agency official who had a key role on climate policy said at a news conference Tuesday.”
https://www.mcclatchydc.com/homepage/story/43469.html
The second item (appearing in a story on the G-8 summit) was a U.S. government supplied map, in which carbon emissions were shown by nation (2005 figures, in metric tons per capita, fuel combustion only).
Guess who leads the pack? That’s right, the United States. I wonder if there might be a connection between this fact and the political interference mentioned in the first item? Hmmm…
(In this map, Australia, Canada, Saudi Arabia and Russia follow, in that order. Sorry, I can’t find an online link to the map — it isn’t reproduced in any of the online versions of the story, including the newspaper in whose hardcopy edition it ran.)