by Alan Barclay, Ph. D.,
If it weren’t so serious, the irony of it all would be delicious.
One of the main original stumbling blocks to the world-wide implementation of the Kyoto Protocol for the limitation of carbon dioxide emissions was the steadfast refusal of the United States to ratify the original treaty. First promulgated in 1997 and calling for dramatic, world-wide reductions in the levels of the emission of greenhouse gases, the protocol was ratified by up to 140 countries, including all the members of the European Union. Crucially, however a few key countries notably India, China and, most importantly the United States refused to ratify the agreement. At the time, President Bush famously justified his non-ratification of the treaty by claiming that if the US signed up to Kyoto “it would wreck the US economy”! Now, nearly nine years later it’s not just the US economy that appears to be wrecked, but virtually that of the whole industrial world, admittedly from credit-crunch bank excesses and not from the additional cost of implementing Kyoto that worried President Bush so much.
Intuitively, it would appear that the calamitous decline of industrial output, not only in the West but also in the (once) rapidly growing, export-oriented countries such as India and China, could only be a good thing as far as carbon dioxide emissions are concerned. Even going just on the strength of the crude oil price, which is now approximately only a quarter of what it was a year ago, and reflects the decreased demand, there has been a significant reduction in the total amount of crude oil consumed, and a corresponding reduction in greenhouse gases released into the atmosphere. On the face of it, the resulting slowing down of the global warming process could be at least some meagre crumb of comfort in the midst of the current economic woes.
However, as often occurs with environmental matters, things are rarely so straightforward. Many observers consider that the best hope for sustainable improvement in the amount of greenhouse gas emissions was the economic impetus that sky-high crude oil prices gave to the search for meaningful non-polluting sources of energy, ranging from wind, solar, tidal to even safe nuclear energy (with some sort of yet-to-be-discovered “green” solution to the waste disposal issue). With crude oil prices languishing at their current levels, development of even the most efficient of these alternative energy sources is just not economically viable. Even worse, with most of world-wide industry now setting its top priority as being simply to survive and stay in business, the incentive to implement more environmentally friendly production processes with their inevitably increased costs is absolutely zero.
However, although admittedly it gets progressively more difficult to do so, we have to assume that one day, even modest economic growth will return. It is somewhat depressing to think that, come that happy day, we could well be back to where we started as far greenhouse gas reduction is concerned. The one enduring message regarding the global warming-induced steady degradation of the environment is that it is played out over a long time-scale and that of necessity solutions to it take a long time to develop and implement. Hard though it is, we should not lose complete sight of our greenhouse gas objectives in our effort to weather the current economic storm. The Kyoto agreement expires in 2012; already talks are underway for its extension/replacement with an even stricter version. The aim is that a preliminary agreement could even be reached by the end of this year. The negotiations promise to be tough.
