All Nations Must Contribute to Solution on Global Warming

by Boyd Young,
President, United Paperworkers International Union

This month, U.S. negotiators went to Kyoto, Japan, to negotiate on proposed new amendments to the 1992 Rio Convention on Climate Change. At Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, the industrialized nations, including the U.S., agreed to voluntary limits on their emissions of greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide. The draft treaty coming out of Kyoto, if implemented, would be a disaster.

Greenhouse gases, which in addition to carbon dioxide include methane and nitrous oxide, can trap heat inside the Earth's atmosphere in much the same way as glass traps heat inside a greenhouse. Most scientists believe that the human-caused production of these gases via automobile engines, industrial processes, household appliances, power generation and other means is causing the temperature of the entire earth to rise. Many of these scientists believe there is a potential for disastrous effects if greenhouse gases are not curbed soon.

The voluntary limits set in 1992 unfortunately did not cause the emissions of these gases by the developed countries to go down.

Now the Clinton Administration has agreed in Kyoto that, per the so- called Berlin Mandate of 1995, the industrial nations will accept mandatory limits on these pollutants. Meanwhile, developing nations such as China, Brazil, Mexico and Indonesia are exempt from any mandatory requirements.

If mandatory curbs on greenhouse gases are not extended to all nations, it will mean an estimated loss of 1.6 million jobs in the U.S. and massive job loss elsewhere in the industrialized world. Energy-intensive industries that face costly limits in these countries will not only have an incentive to shut down, they will have a huge incentive to move jobs to those countries that are not subject to the limits.

Another bad consequence of the Kyoto agreement is that, if it is implemented, the world's overall emissions of greenhouse gases would still increase as energy-efficient mills and plants in industrial countries are replaced by less-efficient facilities in other nations. In fact, even if no mandatory limits were to be set on industrial nations, the developing countries would still emit a greater share of the world's greenhouse gases.

There is no sense to this attempt to deal with a global problem by regulating only one part of the world. Not only is it wrong, it just won't work. The irony is that if developing countries were subjected along with the rest of the world to reasonable curbs on greenhouse gases, these nations and their investors would have a large incentive to develop energy-efficient industries from the start, and would not then have to spend enormous resources on re-tooling when their greenhouse emissions "catch up" with the rest of the world. The AFL-CIO and the worldwide trade secretariat, the Intl. Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mine & General Workers Unions (ICEM), asked the U.S. and the other developed nations to insist that any mandatory provisions of the proposed global climate-change agreements include appropriate limits for both industrial and developing countries.

On August 1, the U.S. Senate overwhelmingly passed a resolution calling on the U.S. to reject any treaty that fails to include developing countries in any mandatory limits.

The Kyoto treaty cannot take effect in the U.S. unless it is ratified by a two-thirds vote of the Senate. The Clinton Administration agreed to cut U.S. emissions by seven percent below 1990 levels. The administration did this in spite of the fact that no thorough study of the economic and social impact of greenhouse gas limits-particularly those that do not apply to all nations - has been done. The study is essential - in part because the threat of industries moving to evade the proposed limits is a threat of economic harm to the developed world, and a threat of environmental harm to the entire world as greenhouse emissions continue to increase. The Kyoto treaty does not include any provisions mitigating its economic and social effects on working people. It should not be ratified.

Our government negotiators needed to accept nothing less than a true worldwide treaty that includes all countries in its standards. If the developing countries are not part of the solution to the global-warming problem, there will be no solution.