Greenhouse colonialism: how rich countries make the poor pay
By Norm Dixon
It's the stuff of countless Hollywood sci-fi flicks: the existence of our fragile planet is threatened by [insert appropriate danger: a) evil extraterrestrials; b) massive meteorites; c) a diabolically deadly disease; d) a giant dinosaur, insects, silicon crystals or a gorilla or two]; heads of governments and scientists from rich and poor countries alike meet at the UN, bury their differences, pool their resources and pull together to defeat the common threat to humankind — just in the nick of time. If only Hollywood script-writers were running the planet!
Faced with a very real, looming planet-wide catastrophe — global warming caused by accumulating greenhouse gases — the governments of the world's rich industrialised countries are refusing to take vital steps necessary to avert it.
A far cry from the fantasies manufactured in Tinseltown, western governments put protection of the profits and "competitiveness" of their powerful corporations, and the super-rich who own them, above the welfare of the world's population.
From December 1 to 10, government representatives from throughout the world will meet in Kyoto, Japan, to decide how to tackle the greenhouse crisis. The latest in a series of international meetings that began with the 1992 Rio Earth Summit, the Kyoto meeting is supposed to be where the wealthy industrialised countries agree on decisive action to stabilise, then reduce, the amount of greenhouses gases being released into the atmosphere.
The goals that need to be met are straightforward, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change — an official advisory body consisting of scientists from 80 countries. Unless the build-up of carbon dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gases (methane, hydrocarbons, nitrous oxides and water vapour) are stabilised, the Earth's average temperature will rise between 1.5 and 4.5° Celsius during the next century.
To achieve stabilisation, global greenhouse emissions must be rapidly cut by a minimum of 60% from current levels, irrespective of population and economic growth. Anything less will not stem global warming.
The Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS), which includes 38 states most vulnerable to climate-induced sea level rises, has proposed that industrialised countries agree to a 20% cut in emissions compared to 1990 by 2005. The AOSIS position was backed by the world's poorest countries, organised in the Group of 77 (G77).
At the 1992 Earth Summit, the industrialised countries agreed to "voluntarily" reduce their emissions to 1990 levels by the year 2000. By 1995, it had become obvious that the west was not serious about meeting the targets set in Rio.
Between 1990 and 1996, emissions from the OECD countries increased by almost 8%. Estimates are that by 2000, US emissions will be 13% higher than 1990, New Zealand's 15% and Australia's a whopping 25% higher.
At a meeting of signatories to the Rio convention in Berlin in 1995, it was agreed that progress must be accelerated, and a committee was formed to draft an international agreement containing firm commitments to cut emissions after 2000, to be finalised in Kyoto. It restated that the Third World would not be bound by such commitments.
In 1996, a further meeting in Geneva called for "legally binding" emission targets after 2000 and in particular "commitments to a global effort to speed up the development, application, diffusion and transfer of climate-friendly technologies, practices and processes".
But as the western countries have placed their proposals on the negotiating table for Kyoto, all have backtracked. No proposal comes close to the AOSIS position, and all fall far below what is needed to begin to address the greenhouse danger.
In March 1996, the European Union proposed that Kyoto agree to a cut of 15% from 1990 levels of greenhouse emissions by 2010, with an interim target of 7.5% by 2005. On the surface, Europe's position seemed to resemble that of the AOSIS. However, a closer examination reveals that it falls far short.
An essential component of the EU's position is that the EU as a whole must meet the 15% target, not individual countries. This means that countries like France and Spain, which have the capacity to cut their emissions, would not need to do so significantly, while Portugal and Greece may even be allowed to increase theirs.
The 1990 benchmark is very convenient for the EU. Germany's and Britain's emissions have been slashed below the 1990 level because of Germany's wholesale elimination of East Germany's filthy heavy industries and the Thatcher government's brutal destruction of the British coal industry. The EU's average total emissions are already 10% below 1990, simply on the strength of German and British reductions. Had the benchmark been set at a few years later, it would be a different story.
While Europe supports "differentiation" (different targets for different countries) within the EU, it opposes it between other countries. The reason is simple: the bean-counters in Brussels believe that European industry will gain an advantage if their competitors in the rest of the advanced capitalist world are forced to spend more to meet tougher standards.
Not surprisingly, Japan and US rejected the EU position as a sleight of hand. Al Gore, the United States "environmentalist" vice president, dismissed the British and German reductions as "freebies" rather than conscious greenhouse reduction policy.
After a long delay, Japan — the second largest greenhouse gas emitter — announced its position on October 6 — a target of just 5% below 1990 levels by 2012. Soon after, the US — the largest single emitter, contributing almost 25% of current emissions — proposed a meagre target of a return to 1990 levels between 2008 and 2012, followed by an unspecified reduction within five years after.
The EU attacked Japan's and the US proposals as weak and insufficient. "No country can opt out of global warming or fence in its own private climate", said British Prime Minister Tony Blair. German Chancellor Helmut Kohl urged the US to "accept the agreed position of the EU".
The US position includes a sting in the tail for the Third World. Reductions would be conditional on the targets also applying to the underdeveloped world. This flies in the face of previous agreements. Under the US plan, the world's poor are being held responsible for global warming.
At the 1992 Rio Earth Summit, it was agreed that the Third World would not be required to take action immediately in recognition that the First World was responsible for more than 80% of past emissions and some 75% of current emissions.
It was also recognised that the First World has the resources to begin immediately to cut emissions massively and that the west must be prepared to transfer new efficient production and energy technologies to the Third World so that poverty-alleviating industrialisation can proceed with a much smaller impact than it had in the west.
But imperialism has never transferred technology and investment to poor countries out of the goodness of its heart. Cheap resources, cheap labour and maximum profits are the goal. The US position ensures that imperialism will continue to dominate industries in the Third World rather than fund the modernisation of potential competitors.
A document produced by the pro-industry Global Climate Coalition outlines the US capitalists' fear: "Across the world, the newly developed have been identified as clear winners — countries positioned to take advantage of a self-imposed economic constraint within the OECD".
An October TV advertising campaign in the US, funded by a coalition of fossil fuel and other companies, was more crude. A sour-faced businessman in a suit snips Third World countries out of a map of the world, then holds it up. The announcer intones, "The Global Climate Convention is not truly global".
Forcing the Third World to meet targets immediately would cripple locally owned industries. Clinton instead proposes that First World-based corporations build energy-efficient, low polluting plants in the Third World, and that reductions in greenhouse gases that result count towards the First World country's target. All the profits would flow back to the imperialist centre.
From 2008, the US has also proposed the start of international trading of rights to emit greenhouse gas. Permits would be issued to companies allowing them to emit a certain level. Countries or companies that produce less greenhouse gas could then sell their right to pollute to companies that produce more.
The scheme is being backed by the UN Agency for Trade and Development and six other industrialised countries, including Britain and Germany, which are presently drafting rules for the trade.
The G77 has described tradeable emission permits as a ruse to enable rich countries to continue growing at the expense of the poor's right to develop.
At Kyoto, it is likely that the First World governments will compromise among themselves. The EU has let it be known that it is prepared to settle for the Japanese position, which is not substantially different from that of the US.
Another indication that Europe's "tough" stand is simply for show was Blair's close collaboration with Australian PM John Howard to ensure that the October 24-27 Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting did not mention binding targets and gave the nod to differentiation.
Howard has openly campaigned for Australia's right to increase greenhouse emissions. In September, Howard bullied the South Pacific Forum into dropping references to binding greenhouse targets from its final communiqué by threatening to cut aid.
The embarrassing and ludicrous images of Howard — the lonely, Hawaiian-shirted bully in Raratonga or strutting around Edinburgh like a bantam rooster — symbolise the arrogance and selfishness of the First World's environmental imperialism. Howard proclaimed the failure of the South Pacific Forum and CHOGM to mention binding greenhouse gas emission targets as "victories".
The First World is prepared to stall meaningful progress on greenhouse by placing short-term economic and commercial interests above the future of our planet. Measures meant to combat global warming are being cynically manipulated as weapons in trade wars between capitalist economic blocs as well as a convenient new mechanism to maintain the west's economic and political dominance over the Third World.
While the people of the Third World will be first to suffer from — and the least able to counteract — the terrible effects of global warming, nobody will be spared from the impending disaster.
The "victories" on greenhouse being scored by the likes of Howard, Blair, Kohl and Clinton are losses for the rest of us.