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TODAY Monday 16 June 1997 Each weekday. Conn Nugent on what's new in the world, on the site. |
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TODAY Monday 16 June 1997 Each weekday. Conn Nugent on what's new in the world, on the site. |
TODAY IN THE WORLD: Pray for Swelter
The weather in New York City yesterday was disappointingly wonderful. Temperatures in the mid to high 70s, relatively low humidity, azure skies. The day before had shown some promise: mid 80s, muggy. But a cool and breezy overnight had swept it away like an annoying little inconvenience.
Welcome to Kyoto Watch, where "Hot enough for you?" is a question about politics. A small band of zealots in this country spend the biggest part of their lives trying to devise and manage strategies to enlist public opinion on the side of doing something about global warming. (The focus groups tell us that people like "global warming" more than "climate change." We say climate change, and Leonie Haimson covers it big-time.) Everyone agrees that a truly nasty summer would help a good deal.
Kyoto refers to the big international conference that will take place in that city this December. Signatories to the 1992 Rio climate protocol will re-convene and maybe agree to set some specific timetables for when their societies will reduce greenhouse gas emissions to their 1990 levels or below. The Rio protocol itself was a failure in the sense that nobody -- not even the Danes or the Dutch -- did anything near enough by way of energy conservation to offset the increase in carbon dioxide emissions that traditionally characterizes economic expansion.
The United States tried to meet its Rio commitment by holding a press conference. The Clinton Administration, fresh from being flayed over the BTU Tax, embarked on a risible program of pep talks and do-little public/private partnerships ("Voluntarism is not a dirty word," said Energy Secretary Hazel O'Leary). The American economy grew, and so did greenhouse gas emissions, along virtually the same curve. But last summer there was a change in the political weather. Perhaps not a big change, but significant: Assistant Secretary of State Tim Wirth announced that in Kyoto the United States would support the negotiation of specific greenhouse gas reduction goals carried out on specific timetables. He didn't name any goals or times, but the Kyoto Watch zealots were encouraged and -- not without reason -- a little self-congratulatory.
The position of the US government in Kyoto matters because the United States emits more greenhouse gases than any other country and because if the Americans don't agree to cap their emissions then there's a snowball's chance in hell that the Chinese ever will. The Kyoto conference itself will probably be just a windy-speeched ratification of the hardball preliminary negotiations earlier in the fall, and nobody knows exactly what the official American position will be. There's some speculation that -- brace yourself -- domestic political considerations shape that position.
Which brings us back to the political usefulness of a summer swelter. Polls and surveys show that, thus far at least, the health-obsessed average American voter isn't ready to be frightened by the prospect of global warming causing US incidences of diseases hitherto contained in the tropics. Malaria, dengue fever, that kind of thing. This may change if we can get the national TV news to cover some sweet little white woman who contracted malaria from a mosquito buzzing around her retirement community in West Palm Beach. In the meantime, the Kyoto Watch people say we could use "another Chicago," a reference to the much-televised and much-remembered heat wave which oppressed the Second City last summer. Some old people died (old people are always dying, but there were a number of deaths in which the heat was a crucial contributing factor), and the networks ran some great visuals of people on stretchers suffering from heat prostration, the mayor declaring an emergency, kids cooling off in Lake Michigan, etc.
We need another Chicago this summer to complement the terrible floods of this spring in California, the Ohio Valley, and the upper Midwest. The Republicans did the Kyoto Watchers a favor by so thoroughly botching the recent disaster relief bill that people were frequently reminded that weather-induced calamities cost a lot of money. The Kyoto Watchers want people in coffee-and-donut shops to same something like: Jeez, it's hot. You know, I think that global warming thing is really happening, it's getting hotter, and you know, the weather's gotten really kind of weird, the floods and all?
Nobody expects climate change to take off as a big issue, but there may be developing a general sense of unease in the country over the subject. That unease may help stiffen the spine of the Administration as it formulates its bargaining position under a barrage of blows from the fossil fuel and automobile industries and the unions, who are deeply interested in the government's doing as little as possible beyond the Hazel O'Leary model. Mind you, this is all before Kyoto; if anything bold and important is actually negotiated there, you can expect lavish spending on campaigns to defeat ratification in the Senate in 1998. As noted ("Over the Top"), that campaign will be fought about science, national identity, and the American standard of living -- all jeopardized, we will hear, by a treaty with any teeth in it.
In the meantime, plan your plans and ask Providence for a history-making summer of discomfort.
TODAY ON THE SITE
Lots new today. Hibernicus returns with a Capitol Hill Spy feature on the need for enviros to a media strategy that deploys rapid-response capabilities at the first sign of a hostile op-ed. And there's a new Works-in-Progress from the architectural firm of William McDonough and Partners; see a preview of what will be the incredible Environmental Studies Center at Oberlin College in Ohio.
6/13: Treating Soil like Dirt
6/12: Cheap Oil and Bargain Cars
6/11: More Taxes
6/10: Clean Air, Hot Air
6/09: Swimming
6/06: Enviros and Transpo
6/05: Fabulous Ethanol
6/04: Swine and Federalism
6/03: A New Measure
6/02: My Front Yard
5/30: Funders
5/29: Quantification
5/28: Over the Top
5/27: Solar Hippies
5/23: Spiffy Cars, Clunker Bikes
5/22: Petroleum Heresy
5/21: We Irish
5/20: Shallow Backpackers
5/19: Songbirds
5/16: Fat, Fat, Fat
5/15: Our Forthright Administration
5/14: Coral Reefs of the Sahara
5/13: (Life Before) Death and Taxes
5/12: Kids
5/09: Free Trade and Hormones
5/08: Sherry Boehlert, Republican
5/07: Fort Davis, West Texas
5/06: Europe (yawn)
5/05: Divorce, Mothers, Equality
5/02: Killer Grannies and the Highway Bill
5/01: China
4/30: Pity the Mangrove
4/29: Grizzlies off Battery Park
4/28: Mighty Monsanto
4/25: Growth
4/24: Refrigerator Wars
4/23: The Day the Earth Day Stood Still
4/22: Doorman Ecology
4/21: Toyota Steps Out
4/18: Victims of Extremism
4/17: Our White Guy Problem
4/16: Coca-Cola and the Merrit Parkway