U.S. and the International scenario on Global warming

U.S. and the International scenario on Global Warming
The House debate on measures to confront global warming is struggling to reach a meaningful decision for the past twelve years now. The Left are of the opinion that the oil and coal companies are causing a slow-death of the planet and that the conservative policies are the main force behind it. Whereas the Right believed until a few years that global warming was a hoax and that the regulations by the Liberals would lead to a huge economic loss. Even though one can see a noticeable amount of action taking place in the Senate now, the countries all over the world are waiting for the US government to take a positive and a firm decision. This is because the international climate policy depends entirely upon the domestic politics of US.
The entire international debate on measures to curb global warming started with US backing out of the 1998 Kyoto Protocol Treaty. The treaty was signed in Japan by 41 wealthy nations with the target to reduce carbon emissions by 5.2 percent below 1990 levels by 2012. The EU committed to a target of 8 percent and Japan to 6 percent (CQ Global Researcher). U.S. was considered to be an important part of the protocol because it contributes to a quarter of the entire world’s carbon emission constituting just 4 percent of the world’s population (CommonDreams, June 13, 2005).
Surprisingly, U.S. and Australia are the only countries to go against the protocol. The European countries are in favour of government-imposed caps mainly by the industries countries. The developing countries are of the view that it is the developed countries who are mainly responsible for creating global warming and therefore they should not ask them to limit to their emissions. Although the government under former President, Bill Clinton was actively involved in developing the treaty, the Republican-controlled Congress did not ratify it. Several reasons are China, India and Brazil not committing to reducing their carbon emissions and Bush fearing that it would harm the economy and hurt the American workers.
The recent actions that US has taken does convince other countries to some extent but they are still skeptical of Bush’s moves. According to the New York Times article dated June 4, 2007, “the President Bush plan calls for rounding up the world's biggest emitters of greenhouse gases and, in 18 months, settling on nation-by-nation programs for slowing emissions and on a long-term common goal for reducing them.” His plan says that the countries would start implementing their national plans to slow down emissions from 2012 to 2030. The plans would include devising methods to measure progress, researching more on non-polluting energy options and chalking out a common goal for large emission reduction commitments. Even though this plan is in contrast to the climate-policy determined by the European experts after Kyoto ends in 2012 as it works from the top down, Bush said that both the plans will be equally useful.
Bush’s proposal was succeeded by the meeting that recently took place in Bali to decide on the climate plan, resulted in “Bali Action Plan” that contains no commitments to be fulfilled. The plans highlight was that all the countries would be required to undergo “deep cuts” in carbon emissions and also chalks out a timetable that to create the first formal addendum to the 1992 Framework Convention on Climate Change treaty. Besides agreeing to the plan, U.S. also conveyed that the problem still persists with the fast growing economies that need to take some actions too.
Other countries expect the international climate scenario to change once the new U.S. president is elected in November 2008. The New York Times article, “On global warming, McCain and Obama agree: Urgent Action is needed,” dated October 19, 2008, says that out of all the issues both the candidates seem to have the same views on urgent action required to reduce global warming temperature. While McCains top priority will be to create jobs by reviving the nuclear-power industry, Obama insists on an energy plan that along with creating jobs would also benefit the climate. Both the candidates are in favor of legislations that would concentrate on a “cap and trade” mechanism. The article puts forward the details that, “Businesses would have to buy permits from those who achieve bigger cuts than required. Mr. Obama’s bill would be bought by businesses through an auction before they were traded.” While it is most of the environmentalists who support Obama’s plan, industrialists are in favor of McCain’s plan who would allow them to meet their target emission either directly or by buying a kind of a credit called an offset.
Looking at the issue from India’s point of view, the Indian government released the National Action Plan on Climate Change on June 30th 2008. According to the India Today magazine artivcle, “What Indians should do,” the plan mentions eight critical missions on topics like harnessing solar energy and saving the Himalayan ecology. The main emphasis was on using renewable energy and depending less on fossil-fuel based energy. The report also indicated that India would like to play a lead-role in asking the industrialized countries to act in a major way. The government expects these countries to be energy-efficient and bring down their consumption levels. But the author of the article notes that the rich countries have not managed to achieve their commitments while they want the poor countries to commit to reducing carbon emission levels. China, another fastest developing economy is also of the same view and has initiated many environmental plans under its Five-year ‘green’ plan 2001.
Though U.S. is of the view that India and China should join the industrialized countries as well, I beg to differ. The countries that have ample resources in their hands should utilize them for fighting against global warming instead of forcing the poor countries to do so. The developed countries, especially the U.S. need to revisit the saying that, “with great power comes great responsibility.” Just because the other nations depend on the moves made by United States, it should not take up wrong advantage of that. It is high time that U.S. solves its’ domestic political issues regarding global warming and get to work on the global level immediately.