The God Species_ How the Planet Can Survive the Age of Humans - Mark Lynas [122]
The lesson ensuing from this is that nothing can change without strong political leadership. Industry cannot shift by itself: Any company voluntarily eliminating a damaging product that is also made by others will simply cede ground to a competitor. Nor can the private sector be relied upon either to have an environmental conscience or to see the opportunities inherent in progressive change: Vested interests in the commercial status quo will always be more powerful than potential winners not yet making profits in the new markets of the future. This does not mean that corporations should be demonized, however, for they may become vital partners in any eventual economic and technical transformation once governments have decided that such a change is necessary. But the tipping point toward action can only be crossed by politicians, and to do that the corporate lobbyists seeking to protect the status quo must be ignored in the wider interests of human society and the global environment.
HUMANITY’S DARKEST HOUR
For climate change, the necessary political leap of faith was almost made with the Kyoto Protocol, signed in 1997 and designed in explicit imitation of the Montreal Protocol of a decade earlier. But one crucial participant was lacking: the United States. Even before Kyoto, the U.S. Senate, bowing to pressure from the fossil-fuels lobby, made clear that it would never ratify an international treaty on climate change. Represented by Vice President Al Gore, the Clinton Administration nevertheless took on a 7 percent emissions reduction target under Kyoto, but never submitted it to the Senate. Once Clinton and Gore had lost the argument for Kyoto domestically, the stage was set for the new regime of President George W. Bush to repudiate the Protocol entirely. Not only would the U.S. not lead on climate, it quickly grew clear, but it would do everything it could to thwart international progress. Without America, no other political bloc—not even the European Union—was strong enough to take the necessary leap of faith to convince the fossil-fuels industry that its days were numbered. It is a great tragedy, perhaps the greatest in the environmental field, that the United States blocked Kyoto. Had America backed action on climate as squarely as it tackled the ozone layer, we would be in a very different place today.
The Montreal Protocol was also much more successful in the way it dealt with developing countries. Although arguments were fierce over whether poorer countries should also have to eliminate CFC production, they were resolved by giving developing countries an extra decade to comply with the new regulations and setting up a properly funded financial mechanism to help them do so. The issue was not dealt with at the initial Montreal meeting in 1987 but in subsequent negotiations that tightened up the ozone-regulation regime and brought in new players as confidence grew that the system would work. In contrast, the Kyoto Protocol set up a permanent “Berlin Wall” between rich countries with emissions targets and poor countries without them—a deal that now looks rather anachronistic given the rapid rise of China, India, Brazil, and other large new emitters in recent years. This arrangement has maintained a bitter ideological divide, where poor countries accuse rich ones of betraying their commitments, while rich countries worry that any emissions cuts they make will be overwhelmed by the growth of the poor. Both sides have some justice in their accusations, but their never-ending battle has brought the Kyoto Protocol to its knees and led to an unsightly debacle in Copenhagen in 2009 that nearly destroyed the entire multilateral climate process.
Another difference between ozone and climate is that authoritative scientific assessments have not been as