Why U.S. Environmentalists Pin Hopes on Europe

After returning from a meeting with the environmental ministers of the G-8 industrialized nations this month, EPA administrator Christie Whitman wrote a private memo to President Bush informing him that the U.S. has a credibility problem when it comes to climate change. "The World Community," wrote Whitman on March 6, "[is] all convinced of the seriousness of this issues and the need to act now." She "strongly recommended" that Bush "recognize that global warming is a real and serious issues" and said "we need to appear engaged."

'Kyoto is dead'

President Bush energetically ignored that advice when he did a U-turn on his campaign pledge to control carbon dioxide from power plants. His questioning of the science behind global warming didn't do much to overcome the administration's credibility problem, either. After a series of reports issued by the U.N. this year, most observers believe the science is a lock. Many European officials expressed their concern about Bush's decision. And European ambassadors were shocked when National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice told them at a private lunch at the Swedish embassy in Washington last week that "Kyoto is dead."

The Kyoto Protocol is the only tool on the table to control the greenhouse gases that are driving global warming. But that treaty has been rejected by the Bush administration as unfair because, initially, it does not require developing countries to cut their emissions. However, many observers believe Bush opposes it because the U.S. is by far the greatest greenhouse-gas polluter, and controlling fossil fuel emissions might injure the economy.

"The Kyoto Protocol is the only game in town in their eyes," Whitman also wrote the President. "There is a real fear in the international community that if the U.S. is not willing to discuss the issue within the framework of Kyoto the whole thing will fall apart."

Educating W.

With the doors to the White House now apparently closed to them, U.S. environmentalists are now pinning their hopes that European heads of state will be able to educate Bush about the scientific consensus that human activity is warming the planet, and that the problem may reach catastrophic levels by the end of the century. German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, who is visiting Washington this week, has put climate change in the second spot on his agenda for discussions with Bush, following the conflict in Macedonia.

American environmentalists are also hoping that all the other industrialized countries will ratify Kyoto by the end of 2003, even without the U.S. on board. This would present a complex business environment for multinationals who then might be enlisted into supporting the treaty in the U.S.

U.S. and Euro environmentalists play pass the potato

While American environmentalists now see foreign governments as their best hope for saving the world from global warming, European environmentalists want more action from Greens in the U.S.

"Rather than hanging out in D.C., waiting for a dinner invitation from someone from the White House, they should to into the country and work with people" to build grassroots support for Kyoto, says Stephan Singer, a World Wildlife Fund official in Brussels. "They should go explain to farmers who are opposed to Kyoto and to unions opposed to Kyoto that there cannot be coal mining forever."