In the op ed, Bolton and co-author John Yoo (who some accuse of war crimes), claim the incoming Obama administration is contemplating “binding down American power and interests in a dense web of treaties and international bureuacracies.” One of their prime exhibits is the Kyoto Protocol, which was intended to fight global warming by bringing down emissions of greenhouse gases. Bolton and Woo suggest that once Barack Obama becomes president, he may try to sidestep the treaty ratification process to bind the United States to Kyoto. And that would require “draconian restrictions on energy use.”
Unlike the United States, the nations of the European Union did ratify Kyoto, and have been working to meet its obligations. So rather than speculate, as Bolton and Yoo do in their op ed, we can examine real evidence of what happens when countries try to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. What does that evidence show? According to the European Environment Agency, greenhouse gas emissions in the European Union fell by 8 percent between 1990 and 2005. (Emissions in the United States grew by almost 16 percent.) Maybe I missed it, but during that same period, I didn’t see images on television of Europeans freezing in the dark, or of the French lining up in baguette lines after having been thrown out their jobs due to “draconian” cuts in energy use.
Here is a chart of changes in greenhouse gas emissions in the EU (from the European Environment Agency):
It is true that some of the reductions came from restructuring after the fall of the Soviet Union and the unification of Germany, as well as a switch from coal to natural gas in the United Kingdom. But there have also been substantial gains in efficiency, and a boost in use of renewable energy. According to the U.K.’s Department for Business Enterprise & Regulatory Reform (BERR), energy efficiency in the EU increased by 10 percent between 1990 and 2002. Some individual countries did even better. France led the way with an overall improvement of 20 percent.
All countries will have to do even better in the future — not just to mitigate climate change but arguably to enhance economic performance. The relationship between GDP and energy in the EU is revealing. According to the BERR report, in years when the EU economy was growing by more than 2 percent per year, its energy use per unit of GDP (a measure called “energy intensity”) actually decreased. In other words, far from hampering economic growth, reducing energy use per unit of economic output seems to enhance it. That makes perfect sense, of course, since every unit of energy saved means more money available for productive investment.
I’m no economist, but from what I can tell as a science and environmental journalist, the EU’s efforts to meet its obligations under Kyoto certainly do not seem to be sucking the lifeblood out of the European economy. But perhaps I am missing something. If you think so, please leave a comment, and if you can, also include some additional resources for me and the readers of CEJournal to examine.
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Tom, I’ve been reading everywhere else that the EU cap and trade program has been an immense failure and the EU has in fact had annual increases in emissions of 1-2%.
Your chart there is generally meaningless, only giving percentages and no objective numbers as to what the percentages are percentages OF. What, exactly is a “memo item” and how do I use it to emit CO2? Would we be able to meet the Kyoto limits by ordering a global ban on the proliferation of “memo items”?
Looks like transportation is also a major bad boy in the emissions game.
Now, if the EU gets to count post-soviet restructuring in its Kyoto obligations, why cant we in the US and Canada count our forest growth?
Interesting post. Similar arguments to Bolton’s were used in Canada by the Conservative government to justify ignoring Kyoto. Unlike the U.S., Canada ratified the Kyoto agreement and committed to a 6% reduction in GHGs from 1990 levels by 2008-12. But no serious implementation plan was ever adopted and now the target is well out of reach.
Of course no US president will sign on to Kyoto targets (1990 baseline) after the fact. But the record does clearly show that stabilizing and eventually reducing GHG emissions need not decimate the U.S. economy.
BTW, I got here after reading the “gadfly” thread at ClimateAudit. I’m sure I won’t be the only visitor from there.