Indignation over Kyoto

April 9, 2001
Global warming looks more and more like an excuse for the world's politicians, led by official Europe, to bellow self-righteously at American expense.

Global warming looks more and more like an excuse for the world's politicians, led by official Europe, to bellow self-righteously at American expense. US President George W. Bush took a sensible half step on the issue late last month when he repudiated the Kyoto Protocol on climate change. European politicians exploded with indignation.

Here's an especially scathing sample from Malcolm Bruce, president of Scotland's Liberal Democrats: "George Bush prides himself on having authorized the execution of more people than many dictators, but he is now tearing up the Kyoto Treaty on behalf of the polluting oil, gas, and mining interests that back him and his family. Not content is he with killing Texan prisoners by lethal injection, he now wants to kill thousands or millions around the world by lethal pollution."

Take that, conservative president. Take that, big business. Take that, Texas. Take that, America.

Most European reaction to Bush's move showed more restraint. But little of it showed more scientific sophistication.

Religious intensity

In Europe, the quest for international hand-holding on climate change has attained religious intensity. Politics, therefore, has snuffed analysis. Official Europe wants the developed world to raise taxes on the consumption of fossil energy. Why ask why?

To official Europe, the beginning and end of scientific inquiry is the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a group of 2,000 scientists working under United Nations auspices. The IPCC issued its latest report in February along with an alarming summary for policymakers.

Citing that report, European Commission Environment Commissioner Margot Wallström responded to Bush's move by declaring, "There is no doubt that there is a broad consensus in the scientific community that climate change is happening faster and to a greater extent than previously expected." The report, she said, "sends a very clear message about how serious the situation is on climate change."

A very different view came earlier from one of the authors of the IPCC report at a meeting in Washington, DC.

"The whole notion of a scientific consensus has been contrived to disguise the genuine disagreement among scientists on a number of different issues," said Richard S. Lindzen, Alfred P. Sloan professor of meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "The aura of certainty with which the IPCC's conclusions are being reported is clearly more a matter of politics than science."

Participating scientists complain that the IPCC summary misrepresents underlying documents, especially in its claims of certainty about the warming threat. Yet official Europe apparently looks no further than the summaries. There and elsewhere, it ignores too much.

Scientists recently have voiced doubt that a build-up of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere represents that main cause of observed warming. Assurance also grows that climate feedback mechanisms-mishandled or overlooked by IPCC's computer models-can offset most if not all human influence. Among scientists who do think climate data reveal warming of human origin, many recommend adaptation rather than prevention likely to prove futile. And some scientists assert that greater warmth and more CO2 would sustain life better than current conditions do.

Official Europe, in its zeal to raise taxes, will hear none of that. Its narrow approach to so complex a subject is appalling. And its moralizing against the US on behalf of governments that have not ratified the treaty is hypocritical.

Bush was right to scuttle Kyoto. Clear-minded Europeans know that he was. The treaty is unfair. It won't work.

But Bush's bold and proper move didn't address a larger problem. It responded to only one of Kyoto's many flaws: that the agreement exempted developing countries, which will account for most future growth in greenhouse-gas emissions. In fact, the Bush administration pledged to stay engaged in the issue and took pains not to raise questions about the need for or likely effectiveness of a human response to climate change.

US isolated?

European zeal notwithstanding, those questions need clear answers before anyone's taxes increase for reasons having to do with global warming.

Apparently, the US must stand alone against political single-mindedness on global warming. Apparently, only the US can defend the world against a costly mistake and preserve the scope essential to deliberations involving scientific complexity. In some quarters, they call that being isolated. In other quarters, they call it being right.