Special G8 Double Feature -- The United States Climate Question and the G8 Summit by Richard Meyer

After years of obstinately dragging its feet on climate change, the Bush administration last week has finally won a little praise.

President Bush gave a speech outlining his diplomatic positions prior to this week's G8 summit in Heiligendamm, Germany. In it he acknowledged global warming as an issue he takes "seriously," proposing that the top 15 worldwide carbon polluters discuss possible technology sharing and energy efficiency solutions to help reduce greenhouse gases.

This is an undoubtedly marked policy change from an Administration that has been labeled "denialist" and "anti-science." The President’s language indicates a new willingness to internationally engage the formation of climate solutions, potentially laying the groundwork for negotiations with developing countries like India and China, whom the administration claims must be included in any international regulatory regime if the United States is to participate.

On the surface, this proposal is a welcome shift for those who would like to see real, substantive climate mitigation. Unfortunately, the environmental credibility of this administration has worn thin, and this pronouncement is most likely a tactical maneuver calculated to continue the Administration's political adherence to a business-as-usual approach to climate change (see: do nothing for as long as possible).

The week before Bush’s change-of-heart speech, two events occurred that supports the notion that the Bush team may not be as willing to take on the climate issue as they might indicate. The first was the issuing of an Executive Order instructing the Environmental Protection Agency to develop new rules to regulate and reduce greenhouse gases, with provisions included for information and resource sharing with other federal agencies such as the Departments of Agriculture and Energy. Absent from this Order was any language of mandatory caps on carbon dioxide emissions or timetables for results (see: no teeth). In essence, the order gives more time for federal agencies to study the problem, but no directives to actually solve it.

The second event was the outright rejection of the German-proposed global warming declaration for the G8 summit. Offered by German Chancellor Angela Merkel as a critical topic on this year's G8 agenda, her proposal set greenhouse gas reduction targets of 50% of 1990 levels by 2050, an ambitious post-Kyoto pledge. The Bush administration's diplomatic envoy rejected this language, holding firm to the position that mandatory caps on emissions are unacceptable, and instead offered their more preferable –yet considerably more difficult to enforce – solution of alternative energy technology sharing.

One might roll their eyes at the seeming predictability and repetitiousness of the Bush climate change position. Indeed, since Bush rejected the Kyoto protocol, the White House’s stubbornness to discuss realistic solutions to reduce greenhouse gases has been the modus operandi. This fact is not forgotten by Europe, specifically Chancellor Merkel and outgoing Prime Minister Tony Blair. They perceive President Bush’s policy side-step as a contrivance to subvert an already heavily negotiated and widely agreed upon G8 climate proposal.

The Merkel submitted and Blair supported proposal demarks a clear line in the sand that the Bush administration will not cross. The proposal, on top of establishing mandatory caps on emissions, would also pledge the formation of a global carbon market, a process that they have agreed the United Nations should lead. The United States has rejected these three initiatives. Bush’s own proposal, offered in his speech last week, is now perceived by the European G8 members as a maneuver to split the G8 and create enmity on the climate issue.

The consequences of the Bush strategy will play out this week in Germany. Two outcomes are likely. The first, which the Bush Administration is surely playing for, is a renewed enforcement of their climate position: specifically, that mandatory caps are economically incapacitating and that it is preferable to incentivize climate-fighting technological solutions through subsidies and reduced tariffs.

The second outcome, which Merkel and Blair fear, is a splitting of the G8 membership over the climate question. The consequence of this will probably parallel previous international agreements to climate change: Europe will extend the mandatory emissions caps past 2012, while the United States supports non-binding dateless agreement reducing carbon dioxide emissions. By splitting the G8, the Bush administration strengthens its policy and allows its go-it-alone approach to continue.

The climate question is one of many issues to be discussed during the G8 summit. Others include aid to Africa, and perhaps even Iranian sanctions – a key foreign policy objective the Bush administration cannot achieve unless it has the support of the other G8 members. While these diplomatic questions remain in separate discussion camps, it may behoove the United States to bridge some political gaps with the climate issue, realigning the United States with both political and scientific reality.

-Richard Meyer