Tag: George HW Bush

Categories
International processes United States of America

April 21, 1992 – President Bush again threatens to boycott Earth Summit

On this day, April 21 1992, George HW Bush, President of the United States, speaking at something called the “Young Presidents’ Organization” said “I’m not going to the Rio conference and make a bad deal or be party to a bad deal.”  (full speech here).

The context is that countries, especially France, had been trying to get a stronger deal agreed and then signed at Rio  Bush who was up for re-election that November didn’t want to be seen as going along with what the French and everyone else wanted and being too environmental, and didn’t want to upset his oil buddy mates. His recently deposed Chief of Staff, John Sununu, had successfully blocked/watered down various initiatives.

Why this matters. 

We need to understand that the actions of the Americans in this crucial period have shaped everything that’s happened since.

What happened next?

The French blinked. Michael Howard, as Environment Minister for the UK, was able to come up with the compromise. There was a final special meeting of the international negotiating committee in May in New York, and the deal was set for the big photo op…

There were no targets and timetables in the UNFCCC process, and what we have now, since Paris, is a warmed over version of a “pledge and review” model disregarded in 1991 as inadequate.

Did I mention I didn’t breed and that it’s looking like a smarter and smarter decision?

Categories
International processes

April 18, 1989 – begging letter to world leaders sent

On this day 18th of April 1989. The bigwigs in the “Earth Day 20 Foundation “delivered letters to President Bush, USSR Premier Gorbachev, China Premier Li Peng, and UN Secretary General De Cuellar. “

The letter, signed by Gaylord Nelson, Barry Commoner, Elliot Richardson, John O’Connor (National Toxics Campaign), Gene Karpinski (U.S. Public Interest Research Group), Peter Bahouth (Greenpeace), Cordelia Biddle, and me called on the leaders of the superpowers to convene an environmental summit under the auspices of the UN  (source – Furia, 1990, EPA Journal).

And this is all part of the performative pressure effort, what we would now called virtue-signalling,  Cynically, it’s what you would expect to happen. And this is trying to fill the problem and policy streams and the politics stream and put pressure on people who might otherwise not do as much as they should. 

Why this matters. 

It doesn’t, really. “Nothing matters very much, and very much matters not at all” as someone (Arthur Balfour) once said.

What happened next?

We got Earth Day at 20. And lots of old hippies who have made their peace with the system, got jobs had gotten jobs, wishing they were 20 years younger. And here we are. Now. It’s unclear what impact the letterhead if any, the these people who write memoirs don’t admit that they were particularly influenced by this or that And it’s all wishes and begging of Our Lords and Masters.  Building effective movement organisations and movements that grow, learn, organise and win – that’s beyond our wit, it seems.

Categories
International processes United States of America

April 14th, 1989 – 24 US senators call for immediate unilateral climate action

On April 14 1989 24 US senators declared that the US should cut its carbon emissions in advance of any international agreement.

The context was that the new Bush administration was still delaying and trying to resist any move towards negotiating a global treaty. They weren’t alone in this. So were the Australian and UK governments.

Why this matters

We have to see declarations and statements as part of a Forever War between action and inaction. 

What happened next?

A couple of weeks later, having been caught trying to muzzle James Hansen, the Bush administration was forced to say “okay” to an international treaty process. It then, of course, proceeded to stomp on this process as hard as it could…

Categories
Predatory delay United States of America

Jan 30, 1989 – Je ne fais rein pour regretter… #climate jargon

On this day, January 30, in 1989, James Baker, Secretary of State for the new George HW Bush administration gives a speech propounding so-called “no regrets” actions on climate change (or “global warming” as it was also known). This means, in essence “let’s do things that we would do anyway, that will have other benefits.”

“No regrets” was an attempt to square the circle and to keep everyone more or less on the same page, but the denial campaigns that were just kicking into gear were not satisfied. And in the end, the Bush administration threatened to not attend Rio, if targets and timetables for emissions reductions by wealthy countries were included. That is very consequential, down unto this day. 

Baker has lived a very, very long life, and has continued to campaign on climate as a “climate hawk.”

See also that cartoon 

 Which even has its own wikipedia page.

But at least one person thinks (and with reasons) that we should stop using it.

See also positive externalities.

Categories
Economics of mitigation Predatory delay United States of America

1971, Jan 6: the whiff of sulphur (taxes) and 20 more years of #PredatoryDelay

On this day 51 years ago the idea of – gasp –  putting a tax on something that was causing environmental damage (cuh-razy communist idea) was kicked around within the Nixon administration.

We know this thanks to a really great book called Behind the Curve, by Joshua Howe, which looks at the climate issue before it became famous (see review in Environmental Politics here [paywalled]).

“As early as 1970 the Nixon administration considered levying a tax on SO2 tied to energy production from coal.”

(Howe, 2014:148)

And the footnote has it – John C. Whitaker to Ken Cole, memorandum, Jan 6 1971 “Sulfur Dioxide Emissions Charge,” memo for John B. Connally [sic] Jr. secretary of treasury, Nov. 11 1971. The tax was never implemented, in part because the Office of Management and Budget showed that it would work too well, taxing SO2 emissions out of existence before the program could generate enough revenue to meet Nixon’s pro-business political goals. (Howe, 2014:244) 

Why this matters – we are told that this is all impossible to do anything about – over-emphasised complexification, as part of the predatory delay.  Of course, climate is a much bigger/wider issue than acid rain, and carbon (in the form of fossil fuels) is far harder to replace in the production chain than CFCs or sulfur.  But the basic point – that you can put up taxes on things you are trying to discourage, as long as you think about/do something serious about  the distributional effects on the poorest and most vulnerable – should be entirely uncontroversial. As we will see, this has not been the case.

What happened next?

It would be another 20 years before anything substantive got done about sulphur in the US, with the 1990 Clean Air Act.  The question  of whether emissions trading mattered, or whether technological developments independent of a price-on-sulphur has given academics, activists and policymakers something to write and talk about too. 

Further reading

Bohr, J. (2016) The ‘climatism’ cartel: why climate change deniers oppose market-based mitigation policy. Environmental Politics, Vol. 25, 5.  https://doi.org/10.1080/09644016.2016.1156106

Brigham Daniels, Andrew P. Follett, and Joshua Davis, The Making of the Clean Air Act, 71 HASTINGS L.J. 901 (2020). Available at: https://repository.uchastings.edu/hastings_law_journal/vol71/iss4/3

Gabriel Chan, Robert Stavins, Robert Stowe, and Richard Sweeney (2012) THE SO2 ALLOWANCE-TRADING SYSTEM AND THE CLEAN AIR ACT AMENDMENTS OF 1990: REFLECTIONS ON 20 YEARS OF POLICY INNOVATION. National Tax Journal, 65 (2), 419–452


Lohmann, L. 2006. Carry On Polluting: Comment and analysis in New Scientist. The Cornerhouse, 2 December.

Categories
Activism Australia UNFCCC United States of America

1992, Jan 3: Greenpeace vs POTUS on Climate Change

On this day, 30 years ago, to coincide with the visit of President George HW Bush to Australia, Greenpeace Australia took out newspaper adverts of the Statue of Liberty with smoke billowing from her torch, calling on the United States to drastically reduce its carbon emissions. 

The context for this was that negotiations for the climate treaty to be signed in Rio later that year were well underway. And all the signs were that the US would play a spoiling role. 

This matters, because that’s exactly what Uncle Sam did. The French said rightly, that targets and timetables for emissions reductions by wealthy countries should be included in the text of the treaty. The Americans replied, “if you put those in, we’re not coming.” The French blinked, reasoning that timetables and targets could be inserted later. They were at Kyoto, vastly inadequate, but there. And then the Americans didn’t ratify and withdrew from the process.

We are still living with the consequences of this. And our children, other people’s children, other people’s children will all also live with those. Not to mention all the other species we “share” this planet with. 

It’s always worth remembering that these agreements that we live with now were the result of previous proposals, compromises and in this case -as in many others – naked veto power.