Are the two days of environmental technology talks finishing today in Sydney, Australia, just more hot air that will contribute to global warming, or is something important taking place? The answer may not be clear even at the end of these private discussions by the Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate, made up of the United States, Australia, Japan, China, South Korea and India.
Neither the US, the world’s biggest polluter responsible for fully 25 percent of all carbon gas emissions, nor Australia has signed the Kyoto Protocol. Environmentalists therefore believe that Washington in particular is trying to use the Sydney meeting as a fig leaf for their refusal to implement carbon emission controls, which the Americans estimate will cost them over $50 billion. Green groups say the talks in Sydney are a facade and were aimed at subverting the Kyoto Protocol. Yet the presence of the other four countries, which are all Kyoto signatories, suggests that this is more than just a publicity exercise promoted by the Americans. Far from seeking to split the Kyoto front, Washington looks to be associating itself more closely with key signatories without yet actually taking on the obligations of the protocol itself.
The Sydney meeting should therefore be seen as another crab-like move by the Bush administration toward some sort of compliance with Kyoto. The reason for this reversal of policy is simple: US business, which originally thought it was saving itself money, has woken up to the opportunity lost by staying out. Kyoto signatories are busy working on new technologies to reduce emissions and the companies are embarking on environmental investments and carbon trading, the second helping to defray the cost of the first. Whatever cleanup technology US researchers are developing is unlikely to find ready global markets, unless it is outstandingly good and competitive. Meanwhile as long as US business is not obliged to clean up its act, there will be no domestic market for it either.
US delegates told the Sydney meeting yesterday that their country spent $3 billion a year on energy research. Most of this, however, is into new forms of energy like the hydrogen cell. This investment is pioneer technology that will enable the US to dominate a new market in the same way it did with personal computers. In the long run, a move from fossil fuels could indeed slash carbon gas emissions, but it is estimated that carbon gas production will double in the next 25 years. Therefore, US claims that they are already making a positive contribution to the fight against global warming are specious.
Most of that $3 billion a year US fuel technology investment is being made in future commercial energy opportunities. By contrast, the rest of the world, in spending to clean up existing energy emissions, is behaving to a large degree in an environmentally responsible manner. All Kyoto governments and companies hope to get something out of their efforts, but all equally accept that doing nothing is no longer an option.
