The great global warming swindle

The West is running a protectionist racket against the developing world

Ross Clark

11 August 2007

The West’s new greenness conceals a giant protectionist racket

That, anyway, is the positive spin. Alternatively, one might put Bush’s multilateralist initiative like this: he is fed up with being depicted as the bad boy of climate change. Rather than keeping the US out of the world’s efforts to reduce carbon emissions, as he did when he withdrew from the Kyoto treaty, he has seen an opportunity in joining the process: to suppress industrial competition from the Third World. He has already made clear his price for committing the US to cutting carbon emissions: to impose similar cuts on the developing nations invited to the conference, which include China, India, Mexico, Brazil and Indonesia. Don’t be the least surprised if he gets away with it. It isn’t only President Bush who appears to think that it is the duty of the world’s poor to carry the can for the fossil fuel-guzzling habits of the West. One doesn’t have to deny, or even question, the science of global warming to come to the conclusion that the West’s policy on global warming is rapidly evolving into a giant protectionist racket against the developing world.

When the Kyoto treaty was signed in 1997, developing nations were exempt from targets obliging them to cut their carbon emissions. The argument for excluding them was thoroughly logical: their per-capita carbon emissions were only a fraction of those of the developed world. It was the duty of the rich nations to set an example in cutting their own emissions before any targets were imposed on developing nations.

Since 1997, Western efforts to cut carbon emissions have come to almost naught. US carbon emissions are now 15 per cent higher than they were in 1990 — the baseline level used for all Kyoto targets. Japan’s emissions have risen by 11 per cent. While EU carbon emissions have fallen by 2.9 per cent, overall greenhouse gas emissions have risen. Yet in spite of this record of non-achievement the West is increasingly hectoring the developing world on its carbon emissions. How about this remark from Tony Blair in Johannesburg in May: ‘If we shut down the whole of Britain and emitted nothing, within two years the growth of China’s emissions would make up the difference. They are building a coal-fired power station every four days. They are, I think, about to build 70 major airports. One thing the wealthy world can’t say is, “You can’t grow.” But, on the other hand, one thing I think is really absurd if we want to tackle climate change, is if the world’s largest emitters are not part of the deal.’ In other words, it isn’t us with our Chrysler Voyagers and long-haul holidays to Florida who are to blame for global warming, it is all those pesky Chinamen with their woks and their electrical sewing machines.