Bush's small-mindedness exposed worldwide

SINGAPORE: United States President George W. Bush has confirmed that his administration will not submit the Kyoto Protocol for Senate ratification. Designed to combat global warming, the 1997 international agreement would require industrialized countries to reduce emissions of heat-trapping gases by an average of 5.2 percent by 2012, compared with their 1990 levels.

The United States is the world's biggest culprit, contributing 25 percent of greenhouse gases although its population is only 4 percent of the world's total. Bush's decision will not only mean that the United States will do little to reduce heat-trapping gases but will also, in all probability, kill the protocol.

Though he has promised a Cabinet-level review to find alternative means of dealing with the problem, it is difficult to take his commitment on this matter seriously.

As it is, he has already broken a promise he made during the presidential campaign to regulate power plants' emissions of carbon dioxide, arguing that taking such a step now, while wide swathes of the country face an energy crunch, would not be economically feasible. The argument is specious. At least where the environment is concerned, Bush's conservatism stands exposed as yet another species of "know-nothing" right-wing obtuseness.

Fortunately, the rest of the industrialized world, especially the European Union and Japan, are much more sensible -- and responsible. "We hope Americans will change their minds, because we Europeans think we have the better arguments," said a German official. The position would have been considerably strengthened if EU countries and Japan had ratified the treaty themselves, but it is nevertheless telling to note the near-universal condemnation of Bush's small-mindedness.

Britain, America's most faithful ally, was stinging in its response, with its environment minister warning that "if America now tries to walk away from the Kyoto Protocol, that is not just an environmental decision, it is an issue of transatlantic foreign policy".

Though it is still too early to tell if the EU will impose trade sanctions on the United States, the possibility of that happening cannot be discounted, given the strength of feeling on the continent.

Some EU officials have gone so far as to warn pointedly that the U.S. decision could affect trade relations, especially if European countries take concrete steps to implement the protocol and the United States does not follow suit. EU leaders should press home this threat when they meet Bush in July at a heads-of- government gathering in Bonn to discuss global warming.

Equally important, the argument should be pressed home in America itself, where the environmental movement may find itself revitalized by Bush's shameful act. The real cause of America's current energy crunch is not, as Bush likes to claim, a supply question, but a demand problem. The steps that it could take to combat global warming -- reducing plant emissions or increasing the fuel efficiency of cars, for example -- would also reduce its fuel bills.

Bush's argument that Kyoto is too expensive to implement is misleading. Cleaner factories and cars do not come cheap, of course; there are also economic benefits to be derived from developing, producing and exporting the new technology that would be required to reduce greenhouse gases. The Bush administration refuses to see these facts, in part because it is filled with former oil-men, but it can be forced to if enough Americans are energized enough by this disgraceful decision to mobilize on behalf of a planet that they, more than any other people, have despoiled.

-- The Straits Times/Asia News Network