END OF THE ROAD FOR FOSSIL DINOSAURS AND
THE ANTI-SCIENCE BRIGADE.
The new US administration has
been assumed to be bad news on climate issues. The Trump constituency, and
indeed much of the Republican voting base, has been built around an improbable
coalition that, inter alia, includes substantial direct vested interests in the
form of the oil and coal business lobbies, right-wing ideologies and evangelical movements that reject a
now incontrovertible climate science as an “inconvenient truth”, and a significant
number of constituencies of the “left behind” in America’s rustbelt, where declining
industries have been major employers of labour.
As an aside, there are some
unsurprising parallels with the UK – Redwood, Rees-Mogg, and Lawson being just a few of the examples of a virulent and
quasi-religious climate science denial, and quite strong fundamentalist views
on other political and economic issues. Brexit like Trump represented a coalition of particular "free market" political ideologies and a "left behind" rejection of a perceived elite. The current trio of Brexit ministers - Davis, Fox and Johnson, despite some equivocation
for political advantage, have a distinctly flaky record on this subject.[1]
Ironically it has been
reported (FT. 27 March 2017) that the ever unpredictable Boris Johnson is
trying to persuade Trump not to withdraw from the Paris agreement.
Trump Follow-through on
Climate Policies
The recent news on Trump regime
activities has been more cheerful than might have been expected. Although his
appointment of an apparently rabid sceptic, Scott Pruitt, as Environmental
Protection Agency Administrator(EPA), was met with dismay, Pruitt
has been refusing to overturn the so-called “endangerment finding" of
the agency in 2009[2],
and suffering considerable pressure from conservative Republicans as a result.
There is no doubting Trump’s
dislike in principle of climate policies, but as with his dislike of Obamacare,
it is proving slightly more difficult to express this in practical terms. His
Secretary of State, former ExxonMobil
executive
Rex Tillerson, wants to keep the US in the Paris Agreement, and ExxonMobil, the world's largest publicly traded
oil and gas company, is urging the White House to do just that.
The most powerful argument for
the USA not to abrogate Paris is likely to be, sadly not the overwhelming human
importance of climate change as an existential threat, but the damage to the US
standing in the world, together with the loss of opportunities for US
businesses in relation to low carbon technologies.
A Missed Opportunity
There was also an emissions
reduction strategy that Trump could have followed to the benefit of his
rustbelt constituents. It would have been to target infrastructure spending to
the benefit of areas heavily dependent on basic industries and coal in
particular. Carbon capture and storage would have been a natural choice and
might even have offered a lifeline of sorts to a declining coal industry.
Limitations on Trump Damage
Trump is clearly not good news
for ambitious climate policies, so a corollary of his current troubles is some
degree of relief among those who do worry about future climate. But, apart from
expectations of his possible impotence in key policy areas (cf Obamacare) the
following considerations might allow us to be slightly more cheerful.
-The Obama achievements within
the US were in any case quite limited. The practical consequences of a possibly
quite short Trump presidency are therefore less important than they might have
been, particularly if much of the US and indeed US business continues to “get
on with the job”
-The real importance of Paris
did not reside in achievement of legally binding targets (it failed on this) but
in the universal recognition of the issues and the degree of commitment shown,
at least in principle.
-US backsliding is
unfortunate, but is very unlikely to be copied by China or other major
emitters. It will, like most Trump policies, diminish US influence, but it will
not derail the Paris process of gradually ratcheting up commitments.
.
[1]
David
Davis 2009. BBC report. He said evidence
suggested the earth was cooling, not warming, and that recently leaked e-mails
had shown leading scientists "conspiring to rig the figures to support arlly
their theories". [a wholly untrue allegation as shown by subsequent inquiry]
Liam Fox has generally voted
against measures to mitigate climate change.
Boris Johnson. Telegraph article.
I am speaking only as a layman who
observes that there is plenty of snow in our winters these days, and who
wonders whether it might be time for government to start taking seriously the
possibility — however remote — that Corbyn [Brother of Jeremy and well known
unofficial weather forecaster and contrarian on this subject] is right.
[2]
The
endangerment finding declared that greenhouse gas emissions threaten human
health and welfare and made EPA legally responsible for regulating carbon
dioxide. It later set in motion much of former President Barack Obama's climate
agenda.
No comments:
Post a Comment