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Jewish World Review June 22, 2005 / 15 Sivan, 5765 Gassy Senators By Rich Lowry
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
The U.S. Senate can barely agree to hold up-or-down votes to
confirm judges, but no worries — it is about to save the planet. At
least that's the conceit of Republican senators proposing to
institute caps on emissions of greenhouse gases.
If the U.S. had ratified the Kyoto treaty, it would have had to
reduce carbon dioxide emissions to 1990 levels by 2012. Bipartisan
opposition sank the treaty, and it wasn't even mentioned in the
Democrats' 2004 platform — although its demise is always attributed
in the press to the work of President Bush alone. With Kyoto itself
off the table, senators have been busy trying to forge a Kyoto-lite.
John McCain is promoting a bill that mandates emissions be cut
to 2000 levels by 2010. Republican Sen. Jeff Bingaman (New Mexico)
has proposed a competing bill that wouldn't reduce the absolute
level of carbon dioxide emissions, but their rate of increase. The
game is to get any restriction, no matter how piddling, on carbon
dioxide emissions. As environmental analyst Marlo Lewis of the
Competitive Enterprise Institute argues, the debate then will
forevermore be not whether emissions should be capped, but by how
much. Thus, the U.S. will enter a new era of restrictions on its
energy consumption. Carbon dioxide is a byproduct of coal, oil and
natural gas, which account for 85 percent of all energy consumed by
Americans.
The point of all this is to — insert senatorial furrowed brow
here — address the "crisis" of global warming. Global warming is
real, and it is probably at least partly man-made. The temperature
has risen 0.6 degrees Celsius throughout the past century. Somehow,
we still manage to inhabit this planet Earth. It is unclear what
catastrophe would occur if, under one of the estimates of the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the temperature increased
another 1.4 degrees Celsius throughout the next 100 years.
One theory is that ice caps will melt and lead to a disastrous
increase in the sea level. But warming is not evenly distributed.
Antarctica has experienced slight cooling in recent decades.
Temperatures in Greenland have fallen the past 15 years, and even
though the Arctic is warmer than it was 35 years ago, it is cooler
than it was in 1930.
In short, we have time to think about what we're doing before we
are swallowed by a climate apocalypse. We should realize that
emissions controls are mostly symbolism. Al Gore's top climate
adviser, Tom Wigley, estimated that Kyoto, if fully implemented,
would avert 0.07 Celsius of a degree of warming by 2050. McCain- and
Bingaman-style controls would do even less. This is why Wigley
called Kyoto only "a first and relatively small step" toward
addressing global warming.
Although there is little that can be done to address greenhouse
gases in the short term, who knows what technological advances will
hold in the future? As far as the effects of global warming, most of
the speculation is that it would harm the Third World the most
through increased disease, declining agricultural productivity, etc.
If we worry about the fate of the Third World, however, there are
more urgent ways to address its suffering there than emissions
restrictions. We could plow a portion of the cost from Kyoto-lite
legislation — Bingaman's bill might cost $300 billion by 2025 —
into directly battling HIV/AIDS, combating malnutrition, controlling
malaria and creating more potable water, the problems that kill
millions every year.
U.S. senators, unfortunately, are always inclined to prefer the
meaningless gesture instead.
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© 2005 King Features Syndicate |
Arnold Ahlert | |||||||||||
