GLOBAL WARMING TREATY GOES UP IN SMOKE
President George W Bush trashed the consensus on global warming with the blunt announcement that the treaty on climate control was not in the interests of the US. European leaders like Germany's Gerhard Schroeder could hardly contain their anger, while British PM Tony Blair struggled to pull the US back into the club.
The consensus on global warming was always a political consensus masquerading as a scientific one. Those climatologists that failed to support the findings of the International Panel on Climate Control were denounced in McCarthyite smear campaigns. The panel itself masqueraded as a scientific body, but operated not according to the open system of peer review but on a committee basis, more akin to the drafting of a government document. Rather than winning the argument on the facts, the IPCC sought to bludgeon opponents into submission by weight of numbers. Signatories to the IPCC report were not necessarily experts in the field, but scientists from many different disciplines, their signatures reflecting personal beliefs rather than research. Not since the three International Congresses of Eugenics met between 1912 and 1932 has science been so thoroughly subordinated to political goals.
The real force driving the International Panel on Climate Control was a debate about economics, not climate. The proponents of climate control were supporters of a system of managed capitalism; the opponents, free marketeers. Scientific evidence of anthropogenic global warming gave the rationale for managing industrialization. Seen in terms of pollution, industrialization - especially in the third world - could be presented as a problem, rather than a gain. If, as was argued, permissible CO2 emissions were limited, then a political system of rationing industrial output could be justified.
The decisive driver behind the IPCC treaty has been the competition amongst national interests.
World energy consumption, in quadrillions of British thermal units Region 1990 1996 World total 343.8 375.5 North America 99.7 111.6 United States 83.9 93.3 C and S America 13.7 17.7 Western Europe 60.0 64.0 EE and fSU 73.6 52.4 Middle East 13.1 17.3 Africa 9.2 11.1 Far East and Oceania 74.4 101.4
While US and East Asian energy consumption rose precipitately in the period leading up to the climate treaty, European consumption moderated in the West and fell in the East. At that time, the treaty was largely driven by anxiety over the competition from the East Asian tiger economies - a fear that has waned since the Japanese recession stalled growth in the region. But European governments realized that the treaty was a protectionist bat to beat the US with. Just as the US used the threat of middle eastern terrorism to politicize world energy policy to its advantage, Europe used the threat of Global Warming to advance its interests.
While Bill Clinton and Al Gore were in the White House the differences between the 'Third Way' leaders of the Western world could be contained. With the election of George W Bush the consensus has collapsed - at least for the moment. -- James Heartfield