The Age of Global Warming: A History (22 page)

‘Bush does about-face at warming conference,’ the headline said in
USA Today
.
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Bolin was pleased. ‘I take the president’s speech to be a clear signal to proceed very vigorously with what we are trying to do with the IPCC,’ he told journalists.
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The president was inching closer to Rio.

Canada proposed that Maurice Strong be the conference secretary-general. Bush had known Strong from his days as American ambassador at the UN. Despite being seen as a Democrat, Bush, in ‘typically gentlemanly fashion indicated that I was OK’.
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The view was not reciprocated. ‘A phoney’ and a ‘horse’s rump’ was how administration insiders came to view him.
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Rio was to be the culmination of a two-decade long effort to bring environmental issues from the side-lines to the centre of international politics. As Strong told the 1990 Geneva climate conference:

It will focus on the need for fundamental changes in our economic behaviour and in international economic relations, particularly between North and South, to bring about a new, sustainable and equitable balance between the economic and environmental needs and aspirations of the world community.
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For the developing world, the Earth Summit promised to be a bonanza. ‘This is about sharing power,’ said Rizali Ismail, Malaysia’s UN ambassador.

When it was East vs. West, our development needs were ignored unless you were a marionette of the Soviet Union or the US. Now with the environment seriously frightening many people in comfortable paradise areas, for the first time people are taking us seriously.
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Pakistan’s Mahbubul Haq estimated that the industrial countries would have a ‘peace dividend’ of $1,200 billion to distribute over the next ten years.
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India’s lead climate negotiator, Chandrashekhar Dasgupta, contrasted the split between the US and the rest, and the cohesiveness of the developing world, with China speaking on behalf of the G77 plus China, enhancing the effectiveness of the South in the negotiations.
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The potential for a feeding frenzy set alarm bells ringing in Brazil. José Goldemberg, the Brazilian minister in charge of preparing for the summit, became convinced that the summit was heading for disaster.
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Brazil wanted to be seen making amends for its previous negative attitudes towards.
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In the 1970s, Brazil had been wary of environmentalism as international concern about preservation of the Amazon rainforest was regarded by Brazil’s military rulers as interference in the country’s national sovereignty.

That changed when President Sarney came to power in 1985, ending military rule.  Sarney pressed for Brazil to host the 1992 summit in response to an international outcry about forest fires in the Amazon. Brazilian scientists had concluded that deforestation was not as extensive as the international press had claimed, but that it could also significantly harm the regional climate of parts of the country.
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Fernando Collor de Mello, who succeeded Sarney in 1990, had an added incentive. Under a cloud of corruption charges, Collor hoped that hosting the world’s largest summit might win him a reprieve (he was forced to resign at the end of 1992). To prepare for the summit Goldemberg, a physics professor, met Sununu, the engineering Ph.D. Although Sununu had, Goldemberg thought, a reasonable grasp of the science, he felt Sununu was typically American in thinking if temperatures did rise then technology and air conditioning were the answer.
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In April 1991, reinforcements landed in Brazil. Sailing up the Amazon, the Royal Yacht Britannia berthed at Bel
é
m. It was Prince Charles’s idea to bring together politicians, businessmen and NGO representatives. The most important invitee to the seminar was Collor. When he got wind that Collor might not come, he sent a hand-written letter. ‘The Royal Yacht is sailing all the way out to Brazil especially for this seminar so as to provide what I hoped to be a reasonably neutral and relaxed setting for such a gathering,’ the prince wrote. If Collor didn’t come, the prince continued, ‘I think it would give the wrong signals to many people who are looking forward towards the importance of the 1992 United Nations Conference.’
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It was just as well Collor came, as the prince had also invited Reilly. Brazilian protocol meant that the venue for the meeting between Collor, Goldemberg and two other ministers in Collor’s Cabinet was held on a vessel of the Brazilian navy. Sitting around a table on the boat’s deck, there was a lively discussion on prospects for the conference. The planning looked chaotic, Reilly pitched in. The summit was heading for disaster. As things stood, he would recommend that the president should not go. Collor said that the presence of sixty-five heads of state was worth less than the president. If Bush comes, we will not allow him to be embarrassed, Collor promised. On his return, Reilly switched his recommendation. The Brazilians kept their side of the deal, Reilly believes. ‘They put on a first rate show.’
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Sununu’s departure from the White House at the end of 1991 raised hopes that the administration would soften its opposition to targets and timetables. They were quickly disappointed. On coming to the White House to head the Policy Coordinating Group, Clayton Yeutter was aghast. ‘Why in the world is this summit meeting being held and, for heaven’s sake, why in our presidential election year?’ he asked.
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Rio was putting the administration in an impossible position as the US was bound to be criticised whatever it did. Yeutter tried to find out who in the administration had agreed to the summit in the first place, but got no satisfactory answer. At the same time, the White House became increasingly aware that the other developed nations were playing by different rules and approaching Rio in a different spirit. Yeutter spoke to a senior European diplomat. Would his country be prepared to accept the pledges and commitments expected of them? Of course, came the reply. Would his country be able to carry out those pledges and commitments? Of course not.
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Hypocrisy has always played a role in international relations. Why couldn’t the US play by the same rules as everyone else? When other governments sign a treaty, the hard work is over. For an American president, it is just the beginning. There is more risk in treaty ratification than in negotiating it in the first place. Treaties, especially ones with potentially enormous implications for domestic policy, present institutional challenges almost entirely absent in countries with parliamentary systems. In those, the government controls the legislature and writes the legislation that turns the provisions of a treaty into domestic law. If the courts start to interpret in ways not envisaged by the executive, the government can always amend the original legislation. 

In the US, obtaining a two-thirds majority in the Senate requires the president to commit his time and prestige. Deals might have to be cut with reluctant senators. The Senate can attach ‘reservations’ or ‘understandings’, changing what the president proposes. Further uncertainty comes from how the courts might interpret the treaty. A global warming treaty with emissions cuts hardwired in the text risked being a blank cheque for Congress, with the courts determining the terms of payment.

Domestic and foreign policy advisers in the Bush White House disagreed whether it mattered if the US failed to meet its targets. Yeutter stated that the administration should not agree to binding targets. Brent Scowcroft, national security adviser, argued that in international conventions, every day, the US made commitments it wasn’t sure it could keep.
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A meeting at the White House in April 1992 brought home to Goldemberg and the Brazilians just how precarious the prospects for American participation in the summit had become. Despite Goldemberg’s lowly status, Scowcroft invited him to meet the president where he explained what the summit meant to Brazil.

The White House insisted that all language about guilt and crimes of the developed world be removed from the Earth Charter. Collor despatched Goldemberg to visit China and India to reconcile the G77 stance with the American position and tone down the language. It didn’t prevent the April meeting of the G77 in Kuala Lumpur from reaffirming the developed world’s crimes and guilt.
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If Bush was going to Rio, there had to be an agreement that he could sign. All the indications were that the US would not sign the biodiversity convention (President Clinton did in June 1993, but the Senate did not ratify it). That meant the administration had to agree the climate change convention or the president staying away. At crunch meetings in Paris, the American negotiating team tested the waters to see if there might be a way to bridge the gap with the Europeans. They knew there was no way that the US or, for that matter, most of the other developed nations could scale their carbon dioxide emissions back to 1990 levels. Staring into the abyss of failure, the British side approached the Americans to see if there might be language to finesse the issue. The Americans returned to Washington and worked up a text.
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At the end of April, Michael Howard went to Washington with a version of the text in his pocket. On 29
th
April he visited five different federal departments and agencies. At his 9am meeting at the EPA, Reilly told Howard that it was essential for the US to sign. The outcome depended on Howard’s meeting later that day at the State Department. At the Energy Department, its secretary, Admiral Watkins, also told Howard that his meeting at the State Department was crucial, but that the US should have nothing to do with the convention. Howard had lunch at the British embassy with two senior White House aides who expressed diametrically opposite views. The only thing they could agree on was that the outcome depended entirely on Howard’s meeting at the State Department.
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At his meeting with Zoellick, Howard went through the draft text of the convention line by line. At the end of it, Zoellick declared that it was a document that the US could sign. Then on to the White House and a meeting with Scowcroft. Howard reported the outcome of the meeting with Zoellick. ‘If it’s good enough for Bob, it’s good enough for the president,’ Scowcroft said.
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The next day, he phoned Howard to say that the president wanted a minor change. Howard replied that the Europeans wouldn’t wear it. Zoellick replied that he knew Howard was going to say that and that they would go ahead and sign anyway. The outcome was a coup for British diplomacy. It is doubtful any other country could have pulled it off. Zoellick’s secretary told Howard that they had more calls to and from the British embassy than all the rest put together.

Bush called John Major to confirm the deal, and followed up with calls to President Mitterrand of France (who kept his side of the deal) and Chancellor Kohl of Germany (who didn’t). The text agreed by Howard and Zoellick formed Article 4 2 (a) and (b) of the convention. It requires developed countries to adopt policies and measures to limit greenhouse gas emissions, thereby demonstrating that they are taking the lead in modifying the long-term trend in emissions. The Europeans got their favoured emissions path into the text. Returning to the 1990 emissions level by 2000, the convention states, would contribute to such a modification. The US got a non-binding formulation and recognition of the need to maintain strong and stable economic growth. The way Darman put it, the US was making a moral, but not legal, commitment to cut carbon dioxide emissions.
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‘There is nothing in any of the language which constitutes a commitment to a specific level of emissions at any time,’ Yeutter wrote to conservative Republicans, describing the outcome as masterfully vague.
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