Diplomats from more than 150 nations gathered in Buenos Aires this week to assess what they had done since the Kyoto agreement on global warming last December. The answer is, not much. They can be happy about one thing. Nobody has successfully challenged the urgency of their mission. Despite well-financed efforts by some industry groups to minimize the warming threat, the scientific consensus -- that the unchecked burning of fossil fuels could someday cause great damage to the environment -- remains intact. What is not intact is the spirit of common purpose that produced the Kyoto agreement.
The Kyoto Protocol committed the industrialized world to an average 5 percent reduction in greenhouse emissions below 1990 levels between 2008 and 2012 -- a remarkably ambitious target, given the world's rising dependence on fossil fuels. The American target is 7 percent. But many important details were left unsettled. Even worse, the giant developing countries like India and China have yet to be brought on board. Until that happens, Senate ratification is out of the question. Meanwhile, greenhouse gases in the atmosphere continue to rise. Buenos Aires is a good place to re-energize the process. Two issues are of central importance.
Early Action. Although Kyoto's targets would not become legally binding until 2008, a quick start on the problem is essential -- especially in the United States, which emits one-fourth of the world's greenhouse gases. Because America's emissions are projected to rise by 30 percent between now and 2008 under "business as usual" scenarios, it would be foolish to dawdle. Last-minute efforts to reverse the energy trajectory would be ruinously expensive.
A surprising number of American companies like the idea of early action. For the last year, two public-interest groups -- the Pew Center on Global Climate Change and the Environmental Defense Fund -- have been signing up companies like Boeing, United Technologies and British Petroleum that are prepared to reduce their own emissions even before a treaty is ratified.
But the list would surely be longer if some way could be found to reward companies for taking action now, perhaps by giving them credits they could use to meet whatever obligations they incur when the agreement finally kicks in.
In the Senate, Joseph Lieberman, a Democrat, and John Chafee and Connie Mack, both Republicans, have introduced legislation establishing a mechanism to do just that. But they will have to persuade their colleagues in Congress, which grudgingly provided more money for clean-energy research in the new budget year but has otherwise been indifferent to the global warming issue.
Emissions Trading. The United States would have rejected the Kyoto Protocol if it had not included a provision that allows the sale or trade of emissions allowances among nations. In theory, industrialized nations that cannot quickly meet their targets without crippling energy taxes or costly investments would be able to "buy" pollution permits from poorer countries whose economies are so inefficient that even small adjustments can achieve big reductions in emissions. That transfer of capital, in turn, could help developing countries invest in cleaner technologies.
The British, among others, fear that the United States will exploit the trading plan to avoid making any real cuts in emissions, buying reductions from others instead. These fears are exaggerated. But the best way to put them to rest is to invite American companies to start cutting their emissions now. That would not only pacify the British but send a positive signal to the less-developed countries, which are unlikely to cut their energy use and prejudice their chances for further growth unless they are sure that America is serious.
The United States obviously cannot go it alone. Global warming demands a global response. But the rest of the world is not going to move without the leadership and example of the world's biggest producer of greenhouse gases.
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