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Volume CXXXIII, Number 9 |
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Kyoto treaty unrealistic solution to global economic sustainability
TODD BUELL
At the end of Econ. 101 last week, Prof. Vail asked me why I wasn't arguing
with him more in class. My father is one of his professional colleagues
and thus Prof. Vail knows that I espouse many conservative beliefs.
Although we debated a topic with only a tangential relationship to the
curriculum after class, I had no idea that the chance to challenge Prof.
Vail's ideas would come so publicly. That is until I picked up The Orient
last week and saw Dr. Vail's defense of the Kyoto Treaty ("Econ.
Professor replies," November 2). I felt I had to respond.
Prof. Vail opens by refuting Bush's "unilateralism" in refusing
to ratify the treaty. However, the blame for the lack of ratification
really falls on the shoulders of Bush's predecessor, Mr. Clinton. It was
Pres. Clinton who signed the treaty, knowing that the Senate would not
ratify it.
Under our Constitution, the Senate must give "advise and consent"
before treaties can become a part of our law. In 1997, the Senate voted
95-0 not to ratify the treaty, therefore blame for the failure of the
treaty cannot fall solely on our current president or his party.
Rather, our current president had the leadership to prevent the establishment
of what Prof. Vail calls a "new international governance regime."
Let's think about this for a moment. Do "international governance
regimes" really have that much power?
If, for example, the United Nations carried as much weight as some think
it should, would Saddam Hussein still be in power and probably producing
chemical and biological weapons of mass destruction, including perhaps
the Anthrax that has been terrorizing the United States? Would it have
taken the international community so long to capture war criminals such
as Slobodan Milosevic? Would Osama Bin Laden still be protected by Afghanistan's
government?
Clearly despite good intentions, it is nearly impossible to get the world
to enforce even basic laws of human rights, genocide, and disarmament.
The problem is that all of these international treaties depend on local
enforcement or the honoring of rulings from outside investigative teams.
The agreements are all "horizontal regimes," or, in other words,
they lack the direct coercive power to be effective unless they become
integrated into each country's domestic law.
In the end it is the responsibility of each signatory to ensure that it
is meeting its treaty obligations. The difficulty in settling differences
in the ABM Treaty between the United States and Russia should show us
how difficult it is for two countries to agree on terms of a treaty. That
complexity is compounded when one tries to get the entire world to agree
to standards. A provision that some countries support, others are loath
to adopt.
Some of the stories coming out of countries that have adopted Kyoto illustrate
this point and reinforce the wisdom in Bush's refusal to sign it. For
example, in New Zealand, farmers are required to pay tax for the gas emitted
when their sheep flatulate. Any fourth grader could give you a catchy
name for this absurd consequence of an "international governance
regime."
No proposal that even remotely resembles this would ever find support
in this country. Whether we like it or not, it is not worth supporting
a treaty where we know that there isn't a realistic hope for us to incorporate
its provisions into our laws.
What is important to recognize is that no one in this debate is pro-pollution.
Everyone wishes to see the environment preserved for future generations.
That just makes good business sense.
The question is, where should control lie? With international bureaucrats
and agencies who lack the information to understand local problems and
who lack adequate authority? Or should the jurisdiction to proscribe and
enforce environmental laws lie with individual states or in smaller bilateral
treaties that promulgate friendly environmental standards between allies.
I believe the choice is clearly the latter and that the Kyoto treaty
is a well-intentioned but unrealistic approach to solving the problems
of global economic sustainability.