NAFTA A CASE STUDY IN POLITICS OF FEAR

When the House of Representatives passed the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta) last week, it didn't just set the continent on course for prosperity in the next century and the country strongly on the side of international trade. It also ended a controversy rich in ironies that might help the oil industry in its future dealings with the Clinton administration.

Nov. 22, 1993

4 min read

Some of the ironies were obvious: a Democratic President twisting Democratic arms on behalf of an agreement negotiated by his Republican predecessor; a rock-solid movement against Nafta sculpted in the muck of glitzy hype and manufactured facts.

THE DEBATE

But the most useful irony of all went largely unnoticed. It took full shape in the television debate between Perot and Vice President Al Gore. The debate was a master-stroke of strategy and execution by the administration. It also matched two of the world's leading practitioners of the politics of fear. In Nafta, Gore parried Perot's folksy ravings with pointed reason. He's not above fearmongering on other issues, though. In fact, he's the Ross Perot of global warming.

Gore carries the political banner for speculations that use of fossil fuels threatens the planet with catastrophic warming. Reasons exist to doubt that such warming has taken place. If warming has occurred, there are reasons to ask how much if any of it results from rising carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere associated with an industrializing and growing population. And if warming does result from fossil-fuel combustion, there are reasons to think that natural processes offset the effects. There are reasons, in other words, not to be frightened.

Gore will hear none of that. He wants to eliminate the internal combustion engine as a matter of national policy.

That type of thinking, born of and capitalizing on fright, lurks behind at least two Clinton initiatives so far. One was the unsuccessful bid to tax energy use generally and oil use most of all. The other was the President's promise to cut carbon emissions from fossil fuels to 1990 levels by 2000. Clinton's plan for reaching the goal is less drastic than it might have been. But no one in the White House is treating reduced oil use for its own sake as anything less than a basic tenet of governance. And it all relates to fear.

Antioil proposals will return before Clinton leaves office. With Gore down the hall, international pressures great to cut carbon emissions by tax or fiat, and the first set of measures unlikely to meet his CO2 reduction goals, Clinton will look again at the fuel of popular villainy. When he does, industry might do well to borrow a few of Gore's tricks in the Nafta debate with Perot. It should challenge relentlessly the flimsy science that generates so much global warming alarm, give fearmongering the scorn it deserves, and question motive at every opportunity.

FEAR OF GROWTH

Ah, motive: another potentially useful irony from the Nafta controversy. Lists of Nafta opponents included several prominent environmentalist groups, members of which apparently haven't heard that developing countries tend to have bigger environmental problems than do their industrialized counterparts. In fact, environmental opposition to Nafta seemed to boil down to fear that Mexico might grow economically.

To their credit, Clinton and Gore seem not to consider growth of a neighbor so scary a prospect. Yet fear nearly dealt their political standing and international trade a cruel blow. And fear will drive their next attempt to save the earth by denying their country its most valuable fuel. Industry then should not hesitate to remind them of what misplaced fear almost did to Nafta.