Russia Endorsement Of Kyoto Treaty Adds Pressure On Bush

by Jim Lobe

(IPS) WASHINGTON -- The Sept. 30 decision by the Russian government to endorse ratification of the Kyoto Protocol to curb greenhouse gas emissions has thrown a particularly stark spotlight on the degree to which President George W. Bush has isolated the United States on the issue of global warming, as well as other transnational problems.

While it is too early to predict whether the Kremlin's endorsement -- which is virtually certain to be ratified by the Russian Duma in coming weeks -- will have any impact on U.S. public opinion before the presidential elections, many analysts believe it will force Washington, regardless of who wins on Nov. 2, to reassess its position on climate change.

The 1997 treaty takes effect once it has been ratified by industrialized countries that were responsible for at least 55 percent of global greenhouse emissions in 1990. Existing ratifiers, which include the members of the European Union (EU), Canada, Japan, and several Central European states account for only 44 percent. Russia's 17.5 percent share will thus make the treaty law.

"Russia's decision will require the U.S. to rethink its stance on addressing climate change," said Jonathan Pershing, a global-warming expert at the Washington-based World Resources Institute who served as the State Department's main negotiator on climate-change issues during the 1990s.

"Until now, there was no legally binding instrument out there in the world," he told IPS. "But now that it looks like it will soon enter into force and the industrialized countries, with the exception of the U.S. and Australia, have adopted this approach, we need to reconsider whether the thing we're doing fits that model, and if not, what we're going to do about it."

State Department Spokesman Richard Boucher said Washington's position was unchanged.

The United States signed the Kyoto Protocol under former Democratic President Bill Clinton, who nonetheless declined to refer it for ratification to the Senate in light of strong opposition from the Republican leadership in Congress, particularly by lawmakers from states dependent on oil, gas or coal production and automobile manufacturing.

Bush himself denounced the treaty, which requires industrialised countries to reduce their emissions an average of about seven percent below 1990 levels by 2012, in no uncertain terms shortly after taking office.

Citing warnings by Kyoto opponents that compliance could hurt employment and national production, Bush declared in March 2001, "we will not do anything that harms our economy, because first things first are the people who live in America; that's my priority."

His dismissal of the issue came as a shock to many people worldwide, Europeans in particular, and marked the first of a series of unilateralist moves by Bush -- including his rejection of international arms-control efforts and the International Criminal Court (ICC) and culminating in last year's Iraq war -- that have produced unprecedented strains in the trans-Atlantic alliance.

Indeed, Russian President Vladimir Putin's long-awaited decision came just two weeks after British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who has been Bush's staunchest European ally, had pledged in a widely noted speech to push climate change to the very top of the agenda for the Group of Eight (G8) industrialised nations when Britain takes over as G8 chair in January.

In unusually passionate terms, he warned that the consequences of climate change could well be "catastrophic" and that the threat was closer than many believed. "I mean in the lifetime of my children certainly, and possibly within my own."

Blair described the impact of warming as "so far-reaching (and) irreversible in its destructive power that it alters radically human existence."

While his administration appears to have gone from a position of skepticism over scientific claims that greenhouse emissions contribute to global warming to one of acceptance that the relationship between warming and emissions is real, Bush has thus far rejected any effort to place mandatory limits on industry emissions. His emphasis instead has been on voluntary actions to reduce the "intensity" of emissions; that is, the level of emissions per unit of economic output.

In particular, he has failed to support a long-pending measure co-sponsored by fellow Republican Senator John McCain and Democrat Sen Joe Lieberman -- and supported by Kerry -- that would require reductions in greenhouse gas emissions by energy, transportation and manufacturing companies to 2000 levels by 2010. McCain recently denounced the administration's global-warming policy as "disgraceful."

At the same time, states and other local jurisdictions have tried to fill the vacuum with legislation and even lawsuits. In the most far-reaching policy to date, California state regulators approved a new rule that will require automakers to sharply increase fuel efficiency in order to reduce automobile emissions by 30 percent by 2016.

Because California is the country's biggest market, the new rule, if it survives court challenges, is likely to become the national standard.

For U.S. manufacturers that sell much of their output abroad, Russia's ratification -- and with it, the transformation of Kyoto into international law -- poses a similar challenge.

A number of the largest U.S. companies, grouped together in the 'Business Roundtable,' while still opposed to mandatory limits have grown increasingly concerned about their own global competitiveness if they fail to move -- or be seen as moving -- toward compliance with Kyoto.

Also, many firms are eager to take advantage of the global emissions trading market authorised by the protocol (which permits polluting firms to buy "quota" from "clean" companies not using all of theirs) largely at the insistence of the Clinton administration. Washington's continued boycott of the treaty could make it more difficult for them to participate.

If Bush himself does not understand the advantages of U.S. participation in that market, it is clear that Putin does, according to Dan Dudek, the chief economist at the group Environmental Defense (ED). "Russian policy-makers understand that participating in Kyoto's emissions trading market can help attract new investment to make Russia's energy infrastructure more efficient and less polluting," he said.

"This decision is further indication that the Bush administration is isolated in its approach to CO2 (carbon dioxide) emissions and climate change," said Jennifer Morgan of the World Wildlife Fund, who in a statement added that 126 countries have now ratified the Kyoto Protocol.

Klaus Toepfer, executive director of the United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP), also suggested, albeit more diplomatically, that Washington needs to reassess its position, stressing that the recent series of hurricanes that caused billions of dollars of damage to Florida was a harbinger of the future, unless concerted international action is taken now.

"Russia's green light will allow the climate train to leave the station so we can really begin addressing the biggest threat to the planet and its people," Toepfer said in a statement. "I hope other nations, some of whom like Russia have maybe been in the past reluctant to ratify, will now join us in this truly global endeavor."