Innovation Anxiety

Kevin Knobloch
December 14, 2005



Kevin Knobloch is the president of the Union of Concerned Scientists .

Observing the Bush administration’s delegation last week at the international negotiations on reducing global warming emissions in Montreal was Alice-through-the-looking-glass bewildering.

The administration, self-celebrated champions of the market’s ability to solve large societal problems, did all it could to prevent the rest of the world’s industrialized economies from using the power of the marketplace to efficiently harness and reduce global warming pollution. The Bush administration also tried to prevent major developing economies from taking steps to reduce their emissions within the Kyoto framework, even though it criticized the Kyoto Protocol in the past for not including these same developing nations.

The story of the Kyoto Protocol is just one of an essential effort to get the world’s many different societies to work together to protect our planet from the harm that uncontrolled global warming will cause. It is also a story of the government of the most successful capitalist economy in the history of the world—the United States—believing that we cannot flourish under a global warming treaty that demands technological innovation.

At the Montreal talks last week—which included the first meeting of parties to the Kyoto Protocol, which entered into force earlier this year— the U.S. delegation was increasingly isolated in this unfounded belief. Europe, Canada, Russia and Japan all decided to move forward without the United States to negotiate a second, deeper round of mandatory limits on global warming pollution. They understand that such limits, when combined with market-based emissions trading mechanisms, are essential in mobilizing the private-sector technology and capital needed to effectively confront the urgent threat of global warming.

Developing countries showed new openness to participating in the Kyoto process and reducing their emissions. Notably, Papua New Guinea, Costa Rica and other rainforest nations brought forward an innovative proposal to slow tropical deforestation, the cause of 20 to 25 percent of the world's emissions of carbon dioxide. The proposal would create a legal framework under the Kyoto Convention that links deforestation financing and emissions reductions.

Other state and local emissaries from the United States to Montreal made the case that while the president fiddles, a prairie fire of leadership on climate change is spreading across our country. A senior California team came to showcase their state’s far-reaching climate action plan. Greg Nickels, the mayor of Seattle, talked about the nearly 200 mayors in red, blue and purple states who have committed their cities to meeting the Kyoto Protocol global warming emissions reductions.

The Union of Concerned Scientists and other leading non-governmental organizations made clear to other nations that the Bush administration is out of sync with the U.S. body politic. We trumpeted the 21 states and the District of Columbia that have passed renewable energy standards requiring electricity generators to produce more power from wind, solar, biomass and geothermal power. We highlighted the nine states that have adopted California’s unprecedented law reducing global warming pollution from cars and trucks. And we noted corporate leaders like Jeffrey Imelt of General Electric and Bill Ford of Ford Motor Co. who have rewritten their business plans to focus on clean and efficient technologies. These changes will yield profits and new jobs for their companies in the years ahead.

Twenty-five senior U.S. economists, organized by UCS Board member and Columbia Business School economist Geoff Heal, reinforced this message in a statement released in Montreal that said the longer we wait to reduce heat-trapping gases, the costlier it will be.

The U.S. delegation to Montreal pointed to voluntary corporate initiatives and taxpayer-funded research and development. Any good capitalist knows that such modest efforts, without a meaningful and urgent plan to roll those technologies out to the marketplace, merely invites our European and Asian competitors to capitalize on our investment at our economy’s expense. Foreign companies are already learning the ropes of an emerging international carbon credit trading market and manufacturing more efficient products as a result.

Alice in Wonderland would have recognized this world turned on its head, but it is time for the Bush administration to come through the looking glass and catch up with the measured judgment of governmental and business leaders across the globe. These mayors, governors and CEOs know that we must act to prevent the worst impacts of global warming, and we can do so in a way that boosts our economies by creating jobs and investments in our communities.

The opposite approach, insulating U.S. companies from mandates to innovate—as champions of the domestic auto manufacturing industry have done so effectively over the past two decades— is wreaking terrible economic damage. As evidence, the big three automakers have cut 50,000 quality jobs over the past five years and General Motors and Ford recently announced another 35,000 job cuts over the next five years.

The United States should be the world’s leading manufacturer and exporter of the cleanest cars and trucks, appliances and renewable energy. Regrettably, as its performance in Montreal demonstrated for the world to see, the Bush administration does not have faith that American companies, armed with a global market-based trading system, can compete on a free-market stage.

In Montreal, most of the world’s leadership jumped on the departing train, leaving the United States standing virtually alone on the platform. That is the antithesis of the kind of leadership we pride ourselves on— and it should make our business community and all other parts of our civil society anxious about the long-term economic harm our president’s obstinacy will cause us at home.