Editorials

Preparing for the Summer Olympic Games opening this month, China took actions to help make a better impression on thousands of visitors flocking to see the spectacle.

Well ahead of time, the Chinese government shuttered factories temporarily and ordered many cars off the road in an effort to clear the air before visitors arrive.

While industrial production has been cut back to make breathing easier for the games, contestants and visitors, once they conclude, China will resume its role as the greatest emitter of carbon dioxide on earth, noted Edwin Feulner, president of The Heritage Foundation.

China's carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions rose 8 percent last year, after jumping more than 11 percent in each of the two previous years.

A Dutch study found China alone accounted for two-thirds of the growth in global greenhouse gas emissions in 2007, and its current lead over the United States in such emissions is expected to grow.

Feulner suggests that be contrasted with the environmental record of the two countries.

In the United States, government estimates indicate energy-related carbon dioxide emissions increased by only 1.6 percent in 2007, after dropping 1.5 percent the year before. Growth in U.S. emissions is less than growth of the nation's Gross Domestic Products, meaning the economy has improved while reducing the growth of emissions.

A salient point, Feulner said, is the United States is doing that without being part of the Kyoto Treaty. Countries that signed the 1997 agreement are required to slash emissions by a combined 5.2 percent below 1990 level by 2012.

But the treaty is nothing but a pipe dream, he explained. Instead of falling as "required" by the treaty, the United Nations reports such emissions are nearing "an all-time high." Greenhouse gas emissions from the Kyoto signers increased 2.6 percent between 2000 and 2005.

"Signing Kyoto may allow a country to claim it's a good 'global citizen,' but many of those citizens aren't keeping their promises," Feulner pointed out. "The United Nations reports Kyoto signers Austria, New Zealand and Canada have all increased emissions over 1990 levels, by 14, 23 and 54 percent, respectively."

Yet the world might meet Kyoto's goal (a 5 percent reduction from 1990 emissions levels by 2012) only because the economies of so many European economies collapsed when the Iron Curtain fell.

In other words, Feulner said, "only a domestic recession will allow the planet to hit Kyoto's target."

Lawmakers also understand this point. The Senate recently considered the Lieberman-Warner climate change bill, which would have set a limit on emissions of greenhouse gases, mostly CO2 from burning of coal, oil and natural gas.

The bill would have mandated that emissions freeze at 2005 levels in 2012, then plunge. The demand was "an unreasonable - and probably impossible - 70 percent reduction by 2050," Feulner said.

Heritage energy analyst Ben Lieberman, who is not related to the bill's author, observed, "It is hard to think of any economic activity that does not involve energy, and there is not one that would not be made more expensive by Lieberman-Warner." An assessment of the bill by Heritage experts showed it would slash the U.S. GDP by at least $1.7 trillion by the year 2030.

"Killing the economy for a - at best - 0.07 degree Celsius reduction in global temperatures by 2050 (what Kyoto promises) makes no sense," Feulner declared. Economic growth has lifted millions of people out of poverty. That's why developing countries, including China and India, are scrambling to increase their growth rates, not diminish them. The United States can't afford to cut our growth, either."

The United Nations is pressing all countries to approve a new Kyoto agreement to be signed in Denmark next year, even though the old one has proven useless. There is no reason to think a new one would be better.

Focusing on proven policies is cited as the best way to go. Reducing pollution by generating growth has demonstrated effectiveness in the United States, without a treaty.

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