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TODAY Tuesday 24 June 1997 Each weekday. Conn Nugent on what's new in the world, on the site. |
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TODAY Tuesday 24 June 1997 Each weekday. Conn Nugent on what's new in the world, on the site. |
TODAY IN THE WORLD: Il Faut Que Get a Grip
I am a member of the one-half of one percent of Americans who actually likes the French. So sue me. The same things that most of you hate -- the arrogance, the insufferable insistence on there being only one (often misguided) way of doing things, the showy displays, the patronizing airs -- I find rather endearing. Perhaps it helps to be a lapsed Catholic with a taste for pronouncements.
You will admit, at least, that the French got themselves a great piece of real estate. "Wie ein Gott im Frankreich," say the jealous Germans -- "like a god in France" -- when they want to indicate an excellent living arrangement. Mountains, rivers, fields, forests, ocean, mild climate, abundant freshwater. If you were an alien with a Death-Ray, and you had just succeeded in vaporizing all of humanity, where on the newly de-populated planet would you settle? I say California or France.
So perhaps it was in the role of Head Guy of A Gorgeous Place rather than President de la Republique Francaise that Jacques Chirac gave Bill Clinton a hard time yesterday on the question of greenhouse gases. At the non-event summit of the G-7 plus Yeltsin, Chirac pressed Bill Clinton to talk about the Clinton Administration policy on climate change more specifically than his host thought opportune. The European Union last week agreed to press for the goal of a reduction of greenhouse gas emissions of 15% from 1990 levels by 2010. (The New York Times got it wrong this morning when it said the commitment was to reduce to 15% OF 1990 levels. No such miracle.) So Chirac, who, by the way, speaks American well, told Clinton to match the ante. His manner was "prickly and aggressive" complained "American officials" on deep background. These same officials characterized the European standards as "unreasonable."
Chirac noted later that the average American is responsible for emitting three times the amount of greenhouse gases as the average Frenchman (a little bit of an overstatement, actually) and expressed satisfaction that Clinton felt able at least to subscribe to a communique that called for "substantial reductions" by 2010. Chirac has had a hard term at home recently, so it must have been bracing to cause a little trouble for the spin doctors.
What's funny is that Chirac was not asking Clinton to set a new policy but to be precise about an old one. It was eleven months ago that Undersecretary of State Timothy Wirth announced that the Administration would support specific, measurable, binding greenhouse gas reductions at the Kyoto conference this December. Faithful to a tradition of unswerving leadership once the focus group results are clear, the President is apparently waiting for a better time to get specific about the word specific.
To understand his hesitation, you only had to finish the Times story this morning and look one column over. There was a one-quarter page ad from Mobil headlined "Climate Change: Let's Get it Right." It spoke in the new moderate tone now favored by the fossil fuel industries -- "consensus objectives," "cost-effective abatement" -- and it warned of the dangers of different standards obliging different nations at different stages of development. This the Economic Patriotism card, and it's being played all over.
The enviros are cranking, too. Al Gore or no Al Gore, this Administration is taking hits from the greens about its malleability on Clean Air standards and its obfuscation on climate change. It's refreshing, actually. Nobody wants a job in the Administration anymore, people are a little bored with bludgeoning western Republicans, and spirits are high at the prospect of standing up for something in a conspicuous and overstated way. I just got a flyer urging my presence at a "Rally to Stop Global Warming!" when the President addresses the UN on Thursday, and I'm thrilled. "The Clinton/Gore Administration Must Act Now!" the flyer says. The idea that there is now a critical mass of non policy-wonks actually willing to chant hyperbolic climate slogans is deeply satisfying to many of us greenhouse addicts, and we'll show up for sentimental reasons at the very least.
If things go right -- if the US actually grabs the nettle of leadership -- some of us can contemplate early retirement in the Vaucluse, stirring ourselves only for salubrious hill walks and superb meals cooked by unseen hands using one-third the greenhouse gas emissions required by the delicatessen on 32nd Street.
TODAY ON THE SITE
All right, it's not exactly on the site, but tune in anyway to PBS tonight to watch the first of four installments of "Cadillac Desert", Mark Reisner's brilliant account of the boondoggle which is federal water policy in the arid western US. And afterwards come back here and click on Peter Gleick's excellent High Five on water and water policy.
Last week's "Today" columns:
6/23: The Emily Dickinson Parking Garage
6/20: Dude Wilderness
6/19: Stormy Weather
6/18: Nostalgia
6/17: Air War
6/16: Pray for Swelter
To access "Today" columns from previous weeks, click "Archives" below.