Volume I, No. 4 August 6, 1997

eco-logic Bonn

Published by Sovereignty International, Inc.

Economies be damned

By James M. Sheehan

The Clinton-Gore admin-istration is hard at work crafting the U.S. negotiating position for the Kyoto conference. To date, the White House refuses to disclose the economic assumptions behind its policy positions, fearing a public backlash against the global climate convention.

Recently the Clinton-Gore administration's Interagency Analytical Team released a draft report entitled "Economic Effects of global Climate Change Policies." The study was supposed to calculate the expected economic damage from the Kyoto protocol. Incredibly, the team failed to reach any firm conclusions. Janet Yellen, chair of the President's Council of Economic Advisers, testified before Congress that "the effort to develop a model or a set of models that can give us a definitive answer as to the economic impacts of a given climate change policy is futile."

For months the Clinton-Gore administration has stonewalled, providing little information regarding the economic basis of its global warming policy proposals. It appears willing to boldly move ahead without the benefit of an economic analysis.

The implications are stunning. Either the Clinton administration's top economists have given up on their own profession, or the results of their work are not welcome in the White House. Evidence strongly suggests the latter.

A related Study by the U.S. Department of Energy found that the proposed protocol would impose serious hardships on all parts of the economy dependent on energy. Proposed energy use mandates would cripple several American industries, notably aluminum, steel, chemicals, petroleum refining, cement, and paper. The Clinton administration suppressed this bad news for five months, and still pretends it does not exist.

Undersecretary of State for Global Affairs, Tim Wirth, has made clear his belief that taxes and regulation can be implemented with little pain. According to this view, emissions trading, conservation measures and technology would make economic costs magically disappear. What this wishful thinking ignores is that these alternatives to fossil fuels all cost more. If conservation measures were cost-effective, the market would need no encouragement from the government to adopt them.

Ironically, the Clinton administration derides the inadequacies of economic models while basing its policy on global climate models. These climate models are incapable of reproducing past climate, yet they are being given greater weight than more reliable economic models.

In part, the Clinton-Gore administration's rejection of economic studies is an attempt to downplay the very real negative effects of a climate treaty. The American people will surely oppose the Kyoto protocol once they find out it will resurrect Mr. Clinton's failed 1993 BTU tax.

White House decisions will have enormous implications for American businesses and households. Indeed, the global warming protocol will entail more government control and management of energy use than at any time since the oil crises of the 1970s. At least the Clinton-Gore administration could be honest about the economic impacts of its policies.

James M. Sheehan is a research associate with the Competitive Enterprise Institute in Washington, DC.

The Fourth Estate

Three "constituencies" have been recognized for representation at FCCC meetings: environmental NGOs; business and industry NGOs; and local government and municipal NGOs. There is a fourth estate: everyone else.

If the impact of policies shaped by the FCCC negotiators were limited to environmental groups, business and industry groups, and local government and municipal groups, then there would be no need for concern about mechanisms for consultation with NGOs. Most of the people of the world -- who must pay for, and conform to the policies crafted by FCCC negotiators -- do not fit into any of the three recognized constituencies. Are they not entitled to be heard on matters that affect their lives?

This question goes to the purpose of UN policy on NGO participation. Is the purpose of NGO participation to provide a mechanism for input by the people who are governed by UN policies? Or is the purpose to provide the UN with an organizational structure to implement its policies -- while giving the appearance of citizen participation?

Executive Secretary, Michael Cutajar, has observed that: "In national democratic processes...diverse participation is encouraged on the assumption that it will contribute, through debate, to a set of broadly shared aims." Dissent is the substance of debate. Debate may be abrasive, but it is the polish that prepares policies for ultimate acceptance by the people who must pay for, and conform to those policies -- the fourth estate.

Global warming or global governance?

On March 15, 1997, in Rio de Janeiro -- before delegates to AGBM Six had fully recovered from jet-lag -- James Gustave Speth, Executive Director of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), stood before the Earth Council's Rio +5 Conference and said:

"...global governance is a powerful and growing reality. Global governance is here, here to stay, and...will inevitably expand."

What does global governance have to do with global warming? He also said:

"Perhaps the most far-reaching, powerful development in the area of global governance is the emergence of the World Trade Organization.... Over time, the global climate convention will actually become even more influential."

Does Mr. Speth know something that is not on the agenda at AGBM Seven?

Are the delegates actually negotiating a protocol to strengthen the FCCC to become an instrument of global governance that will become "more influential" than the World Trade Organization? What is global governance? Can global governance "inevitably expand," as declared by Mr. Speth, without a corresponding diminution of national sovereignty? These are questions being raised by the fourth estate -- the people who are to be governed by global governance and the Kyoto protocol.

Mr. Speth's organization, the UNDP, provided substantial funding to the Commission on Global Governance. The Commission's final report, Our Global Neighborhood, is a 410-page plan to achieve global governance. To a very large extent, the plan would convert national and local governments into administrative units for the UN. Apparently, Mr. Speth believes the work of AGBM Seven is leading to another tool for use in making global governance a more powerful reality.

Kudos to Cutajar -- and staff

Examine the consensus

According to a Wall Street Journal article by Dr. S. Fred Singer (July 28, 1997), "The 1996 IPCC science report has some 80 authors, but only a handful actually wrote the Policymakers Summary." Most of the scientists listed as "contributors" are simply citations from scientific works by authors who expressed no view at all as to the so-called "consensus" on the IPCC report.

"The mere listing of contributors and reviewers does not indicate whether they agreed or disagreed -- and it certainly doesn't indicate support," Singer said.

By contrast, nearly 100 world-renowned climate scientists met in Leipzig, Germany last year and adopted a Declaration expressing their doubts about the validity of computer-driven warming forecasts

Singer cited three independent surveys of IPCC scientific contributors and reviewers conducted by Greenpeace International, the Gallup organization, and the Science and Environmental Policy Project. "We found that about half did not support the conclusions of the Policymakers Summary."

The term "consensus" should express "strong agreement" by the majority, if not all, of the participants. When it comes to the global warming consensus, however, consensus apparently means something else.

Singer's survey findings appear to be confirmed by a fourth survey conducted by Meteorologisches Institut Universitat Hamburg and GKKS Forchungszentrium. Their study targeted 400 "climate scientists" in Germany, Canada, and the U.S. Respondents were asked to "strongly agree" or "strongly disagree" on a scale of 1 to 7, with the following statement: "We can say for certain that global warming is a process already underway." The results should be embarrassing to the IPCC. In Canada, only 23% "strongly agree;" in Germany, 13%; and in the U.S., only 3% "strongly agree." The report, published in the UN's Climate Change Bulletin, failed to report the number for those who "strongly disagree." At the very least, the respondents who chose a number between 1 and 7, admit that they do not know the answer to the question.

The message that comes from these surveys is that no consensus exists among climate scientists that human-induced global warming is occurring. By "spinning" the data, policy- makers have declared that a consensus exists when, clearly, it does not. While this point may be ignored by negotiators, it is not being ignored by the rest of the world.

Brian Farrell, a Harvard University climate modeler says "There really isn't a persuasive case being made," according to Science (May 16, 1997), "the [IPCC] executive summary did not convey the real uncertainties the science has."

The lead author of the IPCC chapter on the detection of greenhouse warming, Benjamin Santer of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, says "It's unfortunate that many people read the media hype before they read the IPCC chapter.... We say quite clearly that few scientists would say the attribution issue was a done deal."

Max Suarez of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center is also skeptical. He says it's "iffy" whether greenhouse warming is already underway. "I wouldn't trust the models to that level of detail yet. Especially if you're trying to explain the very small [temperature] change we've seen...."

"The next 10 years will tell; we're going to have to wait that long to really see," says Klause Hasselmann of the Max Planck Institute for Meterology.

These skeptical climate modelers can hardly be written-off as pawns of the fossil fuel industry. If they believe it will take at least ten more years to determine whether human-induced global warming is a real threat, why are the policymakers in such a rush?

AGBM to the world

What about enforcement?

Shall Article 14 of the FCCC govern non-compliance, with compliance issues referred to the International Court of Justice? Should the protocol bind Parties to the ICJ verdict? Or is there another mechanism lurking somewhere? Is the World Trade Organization going to exercise its sanction power to impose penalties? Or is there support growing for the idea advanced by the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF)?

The idea of creating "an additional mechanism" to impose a "$50 fine per CO₂ ton/year," as proposed by WWF with "the funds used for climate science in developing countries and/or through the Convention's financial mechanism" -- is a horrible idea. It would, in fact, violate both the spirit and the letter of the UN Charter which requires funding from voluntary contributions of members.

The WWF proposal ignores a fundamental principle of UN/member relations: the UN and its related agencies, are deliberative bodies -- not governing bodies. The power to

impose fines is a function of governance -- not a function of deliberation. It will be difficult, indeed, to create an enforcement mechanism that gives meaning to the term "legally binding" without defining global governance to be de facto global government.

Compliance must be left up to the "honesty" of nations, or a mechanism must be created for monitoring and verifying compliance. How can an international body implement a monitoring and compliance regime without infringing national sovereignty, and exposing sensitive trade secrets to industrial espionage?

Even if these thorny problems could be solved in the remaining few months before Kyoto, the enforcement problem still looms large. The moment nations agree to allow an international body to impose penalties -- a function of government -- the character of the United Nations changes. The sanction power of the WTO and the permitting and fee-charging power of the International Seabed Authority, have already begun to transform the United Nations system from a deliberative body to a governing body. An enforcement mechanism within the FCCC would shove the camel's nose even further into the tent.

The solutions being discussed, for a problem that no one can say for sure even exists, could create new problems for everyone, problems that no one wants.

Kyoto: the beginning, or the end?

If

Should policymakers insist on unreasonable requirements, unfairly distributed, to meet an arbitrary deadline set in Berlin, two years of work and many millions of dollars could disappear like a puff of smoke on a windy day. Rather than risk losing American support for the negotiating process, which is more than likely with the proposals now on the table, it might be more prudent to recognize that important questions cannot be answered before Kyoto. The Berlin Mandate was adopted by the COP; it can be amended by the COP. Give the negotiators another year or two or five. The sky is not falling. It is far more important that nations make the right decisions about climate policy than to make quick decisions.

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