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Kyoto Protocol: Doing Dirty Work for Uncompetitive Nationsby
Peter J. Sepp Nov 30, 2001 As palls of smoke from U.S. airstrikes heralded progress in the war to liberate Afghanistan from the Taliban, some officials just couldn’t resist the urge to sound off about other American “emissions.” Britain’s Environment Minister Michael Meacher recently pleaded that just as the world stood behind the U.S. in the War on Terror, the U.S. must now join the world in the War on Global Warming – by ratifying the ill-conceived Kyoto Protocol that President Bush rejected earlier this year. Assigning equal importance to these two efforts seems silly to most Americans, but Meacher’s remark is still revealing.
Although Great Britain (and a handful of others) has made substantial commitments to the larger coalition against terror, the fact remains that America will do most of the dirty work in this new war – round-the-clock bombing, large formations of ground troops, and continuous military campaigns. While supporters of the Kyoto Protocol would have us believe that America must join the pact to save our planet, a closer reading of the treaty and the politics behind it suggests another motive: to do the dirty work for economically uncompetitive nations.
For example, the Kyoto Protocol places severe restrictions on carbon dioxide (CO2) production by countries like the United States while generally not applying them to developing nations, like China and India. According to the International Energy Agency, up to 85% of the projected increase in CO2 emissions will come from countries effectively exempted from the proposed treaty.
Even today, the United States is one of the most efficient and least-polluting nations in the world in terms of CO production relative to national output. For each unit of Gross Domestic Product, China produces five times as much CO2 as the U.S., and India produces four times as much CO2.
But there’s a much worse bottom line from Kyoto: our economy, already reeling from a recession, could slide far deeper. According to a Department of Energy report, if the U.S. followed the original Kyoto Protocol, by 2010 gas prices would have increased by as much as 66 cents per gallon and electricity could cost 86.4% more. Wharton Economic Forecasting Associates projected that ratifying the Treaty could cost the U.S. 2.4 million jobs, reduce the GDP by 3.2%, and cost each American family as much as $4,000 annually.
Such crippling tax and business burdens on the U.S. could be a welcome boon to our 15 competitors in the European Union (EU), who have led the chorus for America to ratify Kyoto. As of September, unemployment in the EU was higher than America’s by half (7.6% versus 4.9%). Taxes as a share of Gross Domestic Product in EU nations ranged from 32%-54% last year, all of which exceeded the U.S. level.
It’s true that Kyoto’s burdens would impact the EU and other industrialized nations as well, but perhaps they are hoping that economies like the U.S. would be hurt worse. This pain-for-gain theory may not be far-fetched. Yale University Professor William Nordhaus calculated that the U.S. would pay 2/3 of the worldwide economic cost of implementing Kyoto’s most important restrictions among “Annex 1” (mostly industrialized) countries. Yet, U.S. GDP comprises roughly 1/3 of the total combined output of Annex 1. America is therefore pulling twice the load, relative to its economic strength.
Foreign governments may be unconcerned about the stakes in their game of “get even” with the U.S., but their citizens are a little more worried. Recently, 13 consumer and taxpayer organizations from 9 nations – including Australia, Germany, and the United Kingdom – signed an open letter warning world leaders to “refrain from ratification and implementation of the treaty until a better understanding of its long-term economic and environmental effects are known.” The signatories understand that while bureaucrats on expense accounts can afford Kyoto’s inconvenient price hikes on energy, transportation, and other products, “the poor (who spend a higher proportion of their incomes on these goods) cannot.”
The Kyoto Protocol would worsen our ailing economy, even though the U.S. already has some of the most stringent environmental regulations of any country in the world and spends billions of dollars each year on aid to developing countries. We cannot afford to throw away trillions more dollars on a scheme concocted by countries that won’t reverse their statist policies, and allow their citizens the economic freedom to compete fairly with us.
Pete Sepp is Vice President for Communications with the 335,000-member National Taxpayers Union, an Alexandria, VA-based citizen group founded in 1969 to work for lower taxes, less regulation, and accountable government.
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