Brief history of bullying

A renewable agenda

Early 1980s: Scientific community increasingly concerned about global warming.

1980: As the Carter administration comes to an end, a report by the President’s Council on Environmental Quality concludes that "the responsibility of the carbon dioxide problem is ours, and we should accept it and act in a way that recognises our role as trustee for future generations." The Reagan administration shows little interest in accepting responsibility.

Late 1980s: European nations begin to press for concerted international action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The United States, first in the Reagan and then in the Bush (Sr) administrations, emphasises scientific uncertainty and unacceptable costs of domestic action.

1988: Partly in response to US calls for more scientific research before any global warming action is taken, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO), in accordance with a UN General Assembly resolution, establishes the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Its mission is to analyse the evidence on the global warming problem, and advice the international community on potential solutions.

By this time, some nations wanted to take internationally coordinated action. But the US was worried about the effect such action would have on its domestic economy. By this time, much of the underlying science about the threat of human-induced climate change was not in question; what uncertainty remained was about the timing and magnitude of warming. It was recognised that the longer one waited, the greater could be the damage. Yet the US stressed the importance of reducing scientific uncertainty. It acted as if harm to the domestic economy, should the global warming theory be false, was of much greater concern than damage to the atmosphere.

During this time, fossil fuel interests, particularly the oil and coal lobbies, were waging intense campaigns against government action by stressing scientific uncertainty and adverse economic impacts. The views of these lobbies would turn out to be remarkably similar to the positions taken by the Reagan and Bush administrations in international negotiations.

Late summer, 1988: Presidential candidate George Bush outlines his approach to global warming when he says, "Those who think we are powerless to do anything about the greenhouse effect are forgetting about the White House effect. As president, I intend to do something about it." Subsequent events would prove this statement to be completely misleading.

June 23, 1988: US government scientist James Hansen testifies before the US Senate Energy Committee. "Global warming is now sufficiently large that we can ascribe with a high degree of confidence a cause and effect relationship to the greenhouse effect…Extreme events, such as summer heat waves and heat wave/drought occurrences in the southeast and midwest United States may be more frequent in the next decade."

Hansen’s remarks spark a controversy in Congress. He is attacked by the coal and oil lobby for "jumping the gun".

January 1989: The National Academy of Sciences recommends to the president-elect (George Bush, Sr) that global warming be placed high on his agenda. It suggests that the "future welfare of human society" is at risk.

March 11, 1989: An ‘environmental summit’ held at The Hague, Netherlands, brings together heads of state from 17 nations. The group recommends the creation of an agency within the UN to combat global warming. The US rejects any such proposal; it dies a natural death.

November 1990: 130 nations meet at the second World Climate Conference at Geneva. The conference declaration calls for all nations to set targets or establish programmes to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. This idea — of setting specific targets — is strongly opposed by the Soviet Union and the US.

December 21, 1990: In response to strong calls for action on global warming coming mostly out of Europe, the UN creates the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC). This body is given the task to negotiate a global warming convention.

January 1991-May 1992: Five INC meetings take place to decide on what would become the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

In these talks, the US would often be isolated from the rest of the world due to the stances it took. Whereas developing countries took the position that the onus of climate change belonged to developed countries, the US wanted developing nations to accept responsibility. It resisted any proposal that would assign responsibility for greenhouse gas reductions on the basis of a nation’s historical share of emissions. It was extremely reluctant to acknowledge ‘differentiated responsibilities’ for national obligations. It strongly resisted proposals to negotiate enforceable targets and timetables to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. On the question of funding greenhouse gas-reducing projects in developing countries, the US insisted that developed nations pay not ‘full’ costs, but only ‘incremental’ ones.

William A Nitze, head of the US delegation at the INC meetings, has given us an insider’s view on the negotiations. Despite the fact that many in the government believed that holding US emissions to 1990 levels by 2000 would not harm the economy, the US strategy was to avoid committing to enforceable targets. Nitze acknowledges that the US position was based not on a rational assessment of national interest, but the ideology and politics of a small circle of White House advisors led by chief of staff John Sununu.

Earth Summit, 1992: The UNFCCC text is tabled. US pressure ensures that the text remains a legally non-binding one.

January 1993: The Clinton administration comes into existence. A month later, president Clinton unveils an energy tax. The Senate snubs the tax. Congress, following the positions of the fossil fuel industry, resists the tax.

April 1993: Clinton announces ‘voluntary’ measures to curb greenhouse gas emissions. The measures are mild. They fail utterly to reduce emission levels. In fact by 2000, the US would find its greenhouse gas emissions almost 13 per cent higher than 1990 levels.

1995: The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a group created with strong support from the US to look into the science of climate change, releases an assessment report. The report concludes that there is a "discernible human influence on climate".

July 8-19, 1996, CoP-2, Geneva: Negotiators release the Geneva Declaration, which is based on a US policy statement made during the conference. The declaration calls for ‘legally-binding medium-term targets’ to reduce emissions, to be negotiated at CoP-3 in Kyoto. It accepts the US position that nations should be allowed flexibility in applying policies and measures to achieve emission limits. The Clinton administration agrees to this approach, thus agreeing to bind the US to quantitative emission limits.

The US official response to the declaration included many controversial options. Global emission trading schemes, options to pick which greenhouse gases any nation could choose to meet their reduction targets, a liberal use of sinks and other carbon absorption methods. The US demanded participation of all nations (contrary to UNFCCC, which it had agreed to). In short, the Clinton administration introduced issues that would considerably slow down the negotiation process.

July 25, 1997: A Senate resolution introduced by senators Hagel and Byrd is passed by a vote of 95-0. The resolution suggests that the US should not sign on any agreement unless "the protocol or other agreement also mandated new specific scheduled commitments…for developing country parties within the same compliance period," or if it would "result in serious harm to the economy of the United States."

This resolution effectively repudiated those UNFCCC principles the US had agreed to in 1992.

December 1-11, 1997, CoP-3, Kyoto: Sixty lobbyists from US coal, oil and car industries, masquerading as the Global Climate Coalition, stalk the corridors of the conference, cajoling and threatening US and developing country delegates. The Protocol to the UNFCCC is signed at the last moment, despite deep misgivings from developing countries.

The US agreed to cut emissions to seven per cent below 1990 levels. It also turned the protocol into a completely ‘flexible’ document. It got nations to agree on a) flexibility in which gases could be counted in national targets, b) flexibility where a nation must reduce its emissions, c) flexibility in how targets might be achieved, d) flexibility in when targets need to be achieved.

At Kyoto, the US introduced concepts that would continue to plague negotiations thereafter. The negotiation process became slower, more complex and contorted.

In the US, legislators reacted angrily to the protocol. In a number of executive branch appropriations acts, Congress prohibited executive branch agencies, including the Environment Protection Agency (EPA), from working on climate issues that could be construed as ‘backdoor’ ratification of the Protocol.

November 1998, CoP-4, Buenos Aires: The conference comes out with a two-year plan of action to resolve protocol-related issues. The EU asks for limits to the amount any nation can use emissions trading as a method to achieve national targets. The US strongly resists this proposal. It pushes for market mechanisms, such as the clean development mechanism. Not much gets done at this conference.

1999: A House appropriations bill for the EPA includes a ban on spending for any effort to implement the Kyoto agreement, including meetings and educating the public about climate issues.

December 1999, CoP-5, Bonn: No major progress on the two-year plan to work out protocol details. The US obdurately pushes for flexibility mechanisms, which continue to be the centre of controversy.

November 2000, CoP-6, The Hague: The US is unrelenting on maximum use of trading mechanisms, and for the right to use its existing forests’ ability to remove carbon as a credit. The EU resists the desire of the US to have unrestricted use of protocol mechanisms. Talks break down.

January 2001: The George W Bush administration takes office.

March 2001: The US walks out of the Kyoto Protocol.

April 30, 2001: Vice President Dick Cheney gives a preview of the Bush energy strategy. "The aim here is efficiency, not austerity." He says the US needs to build as many as 1,900 power plants in the next 20 years to keep abreast of demand.

May 16, 2001: Bush releases the new US Energy Policy. Its cornerstone is increased use of fossil fuels.

July 2001, CoP-6 bis, Bonn: Attempt to maintain quorum for the protocol to come into effect. The US does not attend this conference.

September 2002, WSSD: US undermines multilateral process by emphasising bilateral and voluntary partnerships instead. Refuses to allow countries to urge others to come on board to ratify the Kyoto Protocol, resulting in awkward text in the WSSD Plan of Implementation.

return to the index