Global warming's cold war

by Mark Hertsgaard
The Guardian, Nov 28, 2007

Twenty years after leaving the White House, the late Ronald Reagan remains the most popular Republican in America. Republican presidential candidates constantly praise him on the campaign trail, even as they distance themselves from the deeply unpopular George Bush. Yet Bush is quite reminiscent of Reagan in a crucial respect, one worth recalling as diplomats prepare to meet in Bali next week to negotiate the next phase of the Kyoto protocol on climate change.

Reagan and Bush each became president at a time when the very survival of civilisation was at risk. For Reagan, the threat came from the nuclear arms race; for Bush it came from climate change. And each man responded in a similar way, pursuing an aggressive, America-first policy that accentuated rather than diminished the danger while ignoring appeals from home and abroad to change course before it was too late.

From the time he took office in 2001, Bush has presided over a relentless American build-up of the greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming. Time and again, he has scorned suggestions, even from such political allies as former British prime minister Tony Blair, that he agree to mandatory emissions reductions. Bush has defended his position by asserting, inaccurately, that the 5% reductions required by the Kyoto protocol would "wreck [the American] economy." Besides, he argues, why should America cut emissions when China isn't?

Likewise Reagan: from the time he took office in 1981, he presided over a relentless build-up of nuclear weapons while scorning foreigners and Americans alike who urged him to slow or reverse the arms race. Reagan defended his build-up by asserting, inaccurately, that the United States had fallen behind the Soviet Union and, most frighteningly, that missiles fired by mistake from submarines could be called back in mid-flight.

But then Reagan met his match. In 1985, in a miracle of history, a radical reformer named Mikhail Gorbachev emerged as the new Soviet leader. Although Reagan's arms build-up gave Gorbachev every right to boost his own arsenal in response, Gorbachev instead sought to break the pattern of mutually assured destruction that had shaped the superpowers' confrontation throughout the cold war. He unilaterally banned Soviet nuclear weapons testing three separate times, extending the ban for a total of 18 months, even though the US refused to reciprocate. Since nuclear weapons that are not tested cannot be deployed, the effect was to halt the Soviet side of the arms race. To his credit, Reagan eventually joined Gorbachev's initiatives, leading to the arms reduction agreements signed by the first president Bush.

What the world needs now is another Gorbachev, one who can work similar magic around climate change. Just as the US and Soviets were the superpowers of nuclear weapons, so the US and China are the superpowers of climate change. China and the US each emit so many greenhouse gases that they wield veto power over the rest of the world's progress against global warming; other nations can reduce emissions sharply but the global total will not fall far and fast enough if the US and China don't cooperate.

For years, the US and China have been bogged down in the same dance of mutually assured destruction that characterised US and Soviet dealings on nuclear weapons. Bush (like Bill Clinton before him) says the US should not cut emissions if China doesn't. China retorts that its per capita emissions are only 10% of America's, so why should it cut back when America won't?

The world desperately needs this deadlock to be broken, and the Bali meeting would be an excellent occasion.

Might there be a Gorbachev inside the Chinese Communist party who realises that a different approach is in his nation's self-interest, regardless of what the United States does? China's leaders appear to recognise that climate change is not only a rich man's concern; rising temperatures, deeper droughts and bigger storms are already harming China and promise only to get worse. Nor need China sacrifice economic growth to cut emissions. Official studies indicate that China could use 50% less energy if it simply installed currently available efficiency technologies - more insulation, smarter lights, better motors.

Alas, there is little sign so far that China's leaders are ready, a la Gorbachev, to change course and challenge the US to join them in cutting emissions. President Hu Jintao did pledge environmental reforms in a speech in October, but press aides said international climate policy would not change. As in the Soviet Union 20 years ago, new thinking may come in China only when the current leadership has been replaced.

But in less than a year, the United States will elect a new president. If Americans choose the right person, he - or she - will reverse Bush's policy, promise major emissions reductions and then challenge China to do the same. In that case, the Gorbachev of climate change could turn out to be - imagine! - an American.

One can only guess what Ronald Reagan would think of that.