29 January 2008
It would be sheer folly to imagine that the 15 environment ministers meeting in Hawaii tomorrow are going to achieve anything substantial. The gathering has been summoned by George Bush, a man who remains essentially in denial that human activity is warming our planet. As a summit it will be Emission Impossible.
For all his talk of curbing climate change without stalling global economic growth, the US President has called the Hawaii summit as a spoiling policy. Mr Bush's insistence that cleaner technology, voluntary measures and "aspirational goals" will be enough is a delusion. If the world is to stop temperatures rising by two further hazardous degrees, cuts in greenhouse gases of at least 25 per cent must be in place by 2020.
Of course Mr Bush will have long since left office by then. In the meantime, he clearly intends to do all he can to protect the business interests of his friends. That much was clear last week when Congress grilled his aides over why they have rejected the push by California and 15 other states for higher standards on vehicle emissions. His advisers are even delaying a decision on something as apparently inconsequential as whether polar bears should be classified as threatened by climate change as their habitat melts. The answer may be something to do with the approaching deadline for the sale of oil and gas leases off the coast of Alaska.
Mr Bush claims that business is the potential saviour of the planet. But this weekend, a survey of 500 of the world's top companies showed that only one in 10 regard global warming as a priority. Business does have a key role to play – but only after governments have set the requisite policy framework. Until politicians fix proper carbon-pricing systems, companies will not know how to build climate change risks and opportunities into their business strategies.
The European Commission last week made a start with draft legislation obliging its members to cut emissions by 20 per cent over the next 12 years. Alongside that, Mr Bush's expected offer at Hawaii to increase funding for cleaner technologies looks lame. No one expects much more. The British Government is not even sending the Environment secretary to the meeting, merely a junior minister.
"If you cannot lead... get out of the way," one of the world's smallest nations told its biggest polluter at Bali. There will be no progress on climate change until Washington has a new president, a year from now. Meanwhile Brazil has just announced that 3,235 sq km of its rainforest was destroyed in the last six months. And the Arctic ice cap has shrunk by a further 20 per cent in the past two years. Time is running out.
