The US government properly refuses to ratify the Kyoto Protocol on Climate Change but acts determined to implement it. This month, the Environmental Protection Agency began a voluntary program to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases from trucks and trains. And Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Joseph Lieberman (D-Conn.) proposed a bill requiring cuts in emissions by large companies.
The conflict, of course, is political. President George W. Bush has refused to ratify the Kyoto protocol, upholding a position the Senate took the last time it voted on the question. The EPA's move, based as it is on voluntary action, enables the administration to show concern without resorting to Kyoto's costly requirements. But it won't satisfy global-warming alarmists, to whom Lieberman, an announced presidential candidate, and McCain, a possible contender, are appealing with their new bill.
Strong pressure
Outside the US, political pressure to ratify Kyoto is strong. Canada recently submitted to it.
Yet doubt remains that Kyoto's expensive emission cuts can moderate whatever warming may be occurring. It's far from certain that lowering emissions would meaningfully influence temperature. And the desired changes—less warming, less CO2 in the atmosphere—might not, on balance, be beneficial.
Those propositions receive appallingly little attention. In great numbers, people have decided to believe that burning hydrocarbons raises a dire threat. Politics is responding to that fear.
And the US has a chance to show the rest of the world how to go about it. Countries eagerly bowing to Kyoto have made a mess of things.
A measurable accumulation of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere definitely warrants concern. By itself, the gas build-up represents climate change. Much of it results from human activity. Whether it raises average global temperature is uncertain. But it might. It also might affect the environment in other, possibly offsetting ways. Before people can respond meaningfully to climate change, they must know more about the dynamic system in which the change occurs than they do now.
Beyond knowledge, moderation of emissions of greenhouse gases is in order. Against the mere chance of a global threat, precaution is only prudent. But it shouldn't be as economically sacrificial as the Kyoto prescriptions. And a context for precautionary behavior—now missing from most discussions about the subject—should be the possibility that an atmosphere warmer and richer with carbon than it is now would better sustain life.
Intensified research and sensible precaution are all that science warrants at this point. There is no urgent need to transform human behavior. And heavy taxation would be unjust response to what now is only geophysical observation contorted by politics into mass fear.
To ignore the gas build-up, however, would be as wrong as to respond recklessly to unfounded alarm. The US is right to consider ways to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases. It's also right to insist that more be known about this area of climate science before citizens be required to pay for the probably futile and possibly harmful remedies of the Kyoto accord. To avoid panicky lurches, it should steer the discussion between principles like these:
•Efforts to limit emissions of greenhouse gases will be voluntary to the extent possible.
•Taxation of carbon will be considered only when science establishes a compelling need to incur the cost and documents probability for significant change in measurements of gas concentration and temperature.
•The government will fund aggressive research of climate change, including the effects on plant growth and fresh-water supply of deliberate removal of CO2 from the atmosphere.
•For any action taken to moderate emission of greenhouse gases or to remove gases from the atmosphere, the government will project the likely effect on both gas concentration and temperature.
•Every action taken to moderate climate change will be subject to follow-up measurement to assess effectiveness.
•When research findings or program assessments raise doubt about the effectiveness of mitigation efforts, the efforts will be changed or repealed.
•CO2, a compound essential to animal life, will not be regulated as a pollutant.
The international debate over change within a hugely complex system has been simplistic, hasty, and intolerant of dissent. The US would provide a global service by adopting a more level-headed approach.
