From Copenhagen to 
Nopenhagen for Climate Treaty

In a major blow to the campaign against the presumed threat of global warming, world leaders acknowledge that a legally binding global treaty won’t be approved at next month’s 192-nation climate conference in Copenhagen, Denmark.

The concession Sunday significantly delays U.N. efforts to orchestrate a treaty to limit greenhouse gases to replace the Kyoto treaty, which expires in 2012. Nations like the United States and poorer nations share the blame for the missed deadline. Their concerns are similar to our own.

Developed nations are reluctant to limit domestic greenhouse gas emissions for fear of harming their already slumping economies. They also resist subsidizing poorer nations’ efforts. Meanwhile, developing nations, like China and India, refuse to adopt restrictions unless wealthier nations like the U.S. compensate them for the cost.

This could be a long-term standoff. It’s an understandably worldwide reluctance to commit what increasingly looked like economic suicide.

The proposed 20-percent greenhouse-gas reduction by 2020 would mean the U.S. returning to 1977 emission levels. That would “radically change both the U.S. economy and our personal lives,” according to the National Center for Policy Analysis, a nonprofit organization of energy and environmental policy experts and scientists.

Such concerns so far block congressional efforts. Senators from industrial, carbon-emitting states are reluctant to impose regulations that will put their constituencies at an economic disadvantage.

“If we passed a bill that the rest of the world didn’t follow,” observed Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, “then Uncle Sam could soon become Uncle Sucker and export all of our jobs to China.”

The House has passed greenhouse gas legislation, but a Senate bill is stalled. There is a potential complication. The Obama administration has readied the Environmental Protection Agency to enact Draconian greenhouse gas regulations without congressional approval, partly as leverage to force congressional action. Would the government move ahead administratively to show other countries that the U.S. is serious? Perhaps. But that still wouldn’t satisfy developing nations’ demands for financial compensation, and it could mean a public backlash against the White House, rather than to congressional candidates. Our hope is that these unwise, economy-dampening and freedom-restricting efforts remain stalled.