Global Warming and International Relations

Global Warming and International Relations

The environment and its cleanliness are vitally important for the survival of the human race. This is true in the United States, and in other countries all over the world. Because it is such an important concern, one would think that the main goal of the current administration would be to take care of the environment to ensure that it was clean and healthy for future generations, and to set a good example for the rest of the world. This would be the most logical scenario. However, there have been some recent occurrences which have caused many people to call into question the motives of the Bush administration and the President's stance on the environment, pollution, and foreign policy.

While this particular paper will not involve an in-depth discussion of the Bush administration, some of what this administration has done and is currently doing is important for an understanding of what all is taking place where the environment, and specifically global warming, is concerned. Global warming is a serious issue that many people have ignored for some time. There are those that believe in it very strongly, and there are others that assume it is a problem that scientists with time on their hands have made up to frighten society. Those that do not believe in global warming as a serious threat must begin to pay more attention to the issue, because it is real and it is not going to go away on its own.

Before the issue of global warming specifically is addressed, however, some of how it got started and remained a problem must be addressed, and for that the focus will turn briefly to the Bush administration and how it has relaxed rules and changed regulations for the EPA, which has in turn caused harm to the environment. Clean air and water is the most pressing issue for the future of the entire world, not just the United States, and the changes in regulations have caused many to believe that foreign policy and setting a good example through what the United States is doing has become unimportant to the Bush administration. The following information will show that there are many issues that Bush must address when it comes to the environment, and it is vital that he do so now, so that the EPA can continue to do its job with efficiency and so that other countries will see the importance of keeping pollution out of the air and water, as all of these kinds of problems contribute to dangerous issues such as global warming.

One of the main concerns that many have with the Bush administration with regard to the environment is that President Bush has rejected the Kyoto Protocol, a treaty which was designed to aid all countries in working together to help prevent global warming. Bush stated that, since it could not be said for sure how people's actions affect global warming, how much it will increase in the future, and whether there is really anything that can be done about it, the treaty would not work and there was no reason to sign it. Some think that this approach makes sense, but many believe that Bush did not sign the Kyoto Protocol because the United States is the most polluting country in the world and the Protocol would restrict its actions too much, therefore taking away some of the freedoms that the United States has enjoyed in the past and upsetting people who desire that freedom (Bingaman and Inhofe, 2002, 48).

Whatever the reason, the refusal to sign will cause international repercussions and strain relations with other countries. This will affect foreign policy, possibly for years to come, and could cause difficulties with other countries, namely Japan. There is speculation that Bush refused to sign the Kyoto Protocol because Japan did not seem overly interested in becoming involved in the joint missile defense plan that Bush had talked with them about. If Bush does not sign the protocol, Japan has indicated that it may not sign either. This being the case, the other European nations that have signed the Protocol do not have enough ratification by other countries to make the Protocol binding on an international level (Seremban, 2001, 85). This will affect not only the environment in the United States, but the environment globally, as well as the foreign policy between many different countries.

Bush sees fatal flaws in the Kyoto Protocol and states that it sets goals that are unrealistic and will be doomed to failure. However, despite these allegations both Britain and China have substantially reduced the amount of pollution that they release into the air and water under the restrictions of the Protocol. During the same time period, the pollution levels for the United States continued to climb (Seremban, 2001, 91). It is clear that something must be done to stop the extent of pollution in the United States, as it damages not only that country but the rest of the world as well. The concern from other countries, and from many in the United States, is that the Bush administration is not looking at long-term goals and consequences. Instead, they are concerning themselves only with what is happening immediately and are not looking to the future of their country and the rest of the world. By the time that they do, some fear that it will be too late.

Besides the Kyoto Protocol, another reason that there has been so much concern over foreign policy and environmental issues is that Bush has relaxed or eliminated many of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) rules that have been in place for countless years. All of these rules were working well and helping to keep the air and water safe, but now many of them have been changed or removed, resulting in increased pollution and dangers for the country and its supplies of natural resources.

An editorial in a New York newspaper discussed this problem, and indicated that the EPA has recently dropped their on-going investigations into no less than 50 United States power plants that were thought to be violating the Clean Air Act. This was not done because these power plants were found innocent, but because the Bush administration changed the rules and guidelines. Because of this, and because Bush says he is looking for cost-effective ways of keeping pollution down, the power plants in question, and all other as well, will not be judged by the old rules, but only by new ones that took effect in December of 2003 (This, 2003, 22). These new guidelines are more relaxed than the old ones were, and therefore the contributions to global warming will continue to climb.

This means that these plants that have been violating the Clean Air Act for years will no longer have to worry about it, because they will likely be acceptable under the relaxed rules, and all of their past transgressions will be forgotten. This is good for them, certainly, from a criminal and financial standpoint, but it is bad for everyone else. All of the pollution that these plants have created has already been released into the world, and now they will not even be punished for it. Interestingly enough, representatives from power plants and the utility industry have been among some of the largest donors to President Bush and his campaign.

The new rules now allow for companies that would have to spend a lot of money to add pollution controls to be exempt from this process, provided that the modernization upgrades that they made which led to the need for new pollution controls cost 20% of the plant's total value or less. Because of this, many plants will continue to pollute, and there is nothing that the EPA can do about it. Their hands are also tied in 38 states that have controls that go farther than the federal controls (This, 2003, 28). Whether the states are good at enforcing these controls is irrelevant. Once again, there is nothing that the EPA can do.

This is frustrating to many who work to protect the environment, because the new regulations will allow for increases in many dangerous chemicals including nitrogen oxide and sulfur dioxide, as well as soot. Many studies have already proven that these chemicals, as well as other pollutants, as detrimental to health. This is especially true of children, the elderly, and people that have breathing problems such as asthma and emphysema (Polluter, 2003, 47). The health effects are not the only concern with Bush's new change in rules, as there are many indications that the policy is also bad from an economic standpoint.

In the ten years between 1992 and 2002, the United States spent an estimated $23-26 billion dollars to ensure that it complied with clean air standards and regulations, mostly to help combat global warming. However, during that same time period, the United States also saved somewhere between $120 billion and $193 billion in lost work days, premature deaths, and hospital costs by following the regulations to keep the air clean (Polluter, 2003, 46). Those that do not understand why Bush would relax these rules and harm the environment cite once again the tremendous amount of money that the utility industry has given to the Bush campaign as a potential reason for the rule changes. This does not mean that the writer is anti-Bush, however, as there is no guarantee that a different President in office would not have done exactly the same thing.

There is also a discussion by the Bush administration to weaken the rules that sewage treatment plants must abide by. This would allow more pollution to enter the water, as well as the pollution that would be in the air from the relaxed rules on air quality. The new standard would allow treatment plants to have an abundance of disease-causing microbes in the water that gets released, provided there was a reason, such as a heavy rainfall, that the treatment plant was overloaded. Previously, the plants had to remove these microbes, but this was costly. This would save the $90 billion to $190 billion that it would currently cost to meet the stricter requirements. There is, however, the issue of water quality. People swim, boat, and fish in the waters downstream from many of these plants, and drinking water also comes from many of the rivers and lakes (Return, 2003, 4).

While this change in rules is good for the utility industry, it is bad for the health and safety of Americans. It is also a problem for foreign policy for two reasons. First, other countries see that the United States has given itself a license to pollute the planet. It is only a matter of time before other countries will begin to adopt this opinion. This is especially true if the Kyoto Protocol is not signed by enough countries and is therefore no longer part of international law (Healy and Tapick, 2004, 87).

Second, countries that do business with the United States and choose not to allow themselves to pollute the environment will no longer want to be associated with America. The respect that many other nations have for the United States will drop, and there will likely be trade issues and tariffs placed against goods that come from a country that is ruining the air and water for everyone in the world with a lack of interest in human health that many people would find shocking and appalling. It is clear from the editorials and other sources presented that the American public does not want this kind of pollution in their air and water, and that President Bush is not doing this country or the world any favors by allowing it to happen (Healy and Tapick, 2004, 88).

Global warming itself will now be addressed in more depth as the discussion turns away from the current administration and its problems with global warming and environmental issues and looks more toward the issue of global warming itself, how it occurs, and what kinds of changes it is already causing to the environment (Healy and Tapick, 2004, 129). The scientific evidence is very strong that the activities that human beings are involved in produce many greenhouse gases. The most notable one of these is the carbon dioxide that comes from the burning of fossil fuels. This is seen to be the largest cause of global warming, not just in the United States but throughout the world as well.

Growing scientific evidence further states that global warming has already caused a rise in the average global level of the sea. This rise has been between four and eight inches and has occurred over the last 100 years (Healy and Tapick, 2004, 102). Now, the seas are currently rising at approximately one-tenth of an inch each and every year. While this might not seem like much and most people would discount that amount quite easily, there are many scientists that agree that global warming will be the cause of very serious human and environmental health impacts if there is a continuation of the burning of large quantities of fossil fuels (Healy and Tapick, 2004, 103; U.S., 2004, n.p.).

Many countries are upset with and concerned about the United States because it is one of the largest contributors of greenhouse gases (GHGs), and most of this comes from the power plants that are still burning coal (Healy and Tapick, 2004, 87). In 1998, for example, 24% of the world's emissions of these gases came from the United States, which is a very large amount for one country to produce, even for a large country such as the United States, and was the largest amount produced from any country (Healy and Tapick, 2004, 98; U.S., 2004, n.p.). It was also estimated by the Energy Information Administration that in the years between 1990 and 2001 the GHG emissions in the United States grew over 12% with approximately 84% of the United States' total GHG emissions coming as carbon dioxide, which is one of the most dangerous gases (Healy and Tapick, 2004, 93).

Unfortunately for those that are worried about the dangers of GHGs, fossil fuels such as coal remain the cheapest source of energy, and so they will continue to be used and used often for all different types of applications. It was hoped in the past that there would be mandatory reductions made in the amount of GHGs that were produced by the United States, but any effort to do this, such as the Kyoto Protocol, has been soundly rejected. Instead, further research and efforts that are strictly voluntary at the promotion of more efficient energy has been the focus of the Bush administration.

The Kyoto Protocol, which the United States refused to sign, would have required all of the developed countries to reduce their emissions of GHGs approximately five to eight percent below what they were in 1990, and this would have had to be done by 2008-2012. Currently, however, there are no federal statutes that completely require reductions in the GHG level either by private industry or by federal agencies. There is, however, a significant level of encouragement for the further research and voluntary reductions within the private sector, and this trend is continuing. Even if it is assumed that the private sector industries will adopt voluntarily many of the strategies that are both cost-effective and will reduce GHGs, it is still projected by the EIA that emissions of carbon dioxide in the United States will reach 8,142 million metric tons by the year 2025 (Healy and Tapick, 2004, 94).

This not only seems like a huge number, but it is also 63% higher than the 4,988 million metric tons that were seen in 1990. In other words, even with the voluntary reductions that could be taken, the amount of GHGs will continue to grow quite steadily, where that amount would have gone down if the mandatory reductions were taken as discussed in the Kyoto Protocol (Healy and Tapick, 2004, 97). Many scientists feel that choosing not to sign that document will have very serious, lasting, and detrimental effects on the United States and the rest of the world. While scientists that work closely with the Bush Administration initially wanted to say that the carbon dioxide levels were not a problem, they are not being forced to concede that there is definitive evidence to the contrary. The carbon dioxide levels are strongly increasing, and this is a direct result of fossils fuel usage. All of this has been cited as and proven to be one of the most important causes if not the most important cause where global warming is concerned (Healy and Tapick, 2004, 88).

In 2002 the Bush Administration submitted its Climate Action Report to the United Nations, in which it was forced to admit, although grudgingly, that there are indeed risks from global warming. The administration's report also predicted that the GHG emissions in the United States would grow by 43% in the years between 2000 and 2020 if the current policies that the Bush administration has in place right now are not changed (Healy and Tapick, 2004, 92). More recently than that, the Bush Administration submitted a report to Congress in July of 2004 that dealt with the Climate Change Science Program. This report came with a letter from the Secretaries of Commerce and Energy as well as the science advisor for the Administration and is mandated by the 1990 Global Change Research Act (U.S., 2004, n.p.).

For the first time in that report, the Administration had to acknowledge the belief that the higher levels of carbon dioxide that are coming from human sources is honestly the most likely reason that global warming has been on the rise since 1950. However, the Bush Administration also stated that it was not going to change the approach that it was using through which it chose to delay any actions that would be mandatory and would reduce the GHGs. This would be the case, the Administration determined, until the research and evidence regarding global warming and its causes and consequences was more conclusive.

There has been some question in recent years as to whether individuals have a right to sue federal agencies such as the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and require that they address issues that deal with the climate because everyone is potentially affected by the issue of global warming. There have been attempts at lawsuits that do address the global warming issue, but these raise difficult questions as to their standing. Some decisions by the Supreme Court have either implied or actually stated that the court should not be able to allow a standing for a plaintiff that would file suit alleging an injury to the public, as opposed to alleging an injury to a person or a specific group of people. There are branches of the government, such as the executive branch and Congress, that are deemed to be much better equipped at handling and resolving these types of issues.

There have been other decisions made, however, that do involve the allowing of lawsuits for 'concrete' injuries on a massive scale. The causation and redressability issues of any lawsuit on global warming, though, are extremely difficult to address and raise questions of complexity. Much of this is due to the fact that a single specific polluter (such as a private company in the coal industry) would only produce a very small and insignificant amount of the GHGs that are in the atmosphere (Healy and Tapick, 2004, 95). Because of this, even if a judicial remedy was granted it would have an impact on the GHG emissions that was so negligible and small that there would be largely no point in it and it would not move the country and/or the world really any closer to solving this very serious problem.

A recent decision and one judge's concurring opinion that were made in a case that involved chemicals which were seen to cause the global destruction of the stratospheric ozone layer looked at this issue (Healy and Tapick, 2004, 112). It addressed the very complex concern of whether a plaintiff really has any legal standing to bring suit against individuals and companies that contribute, even in very small ways, to pollution problems that have global implications. The case of Covington v. Jefferson County saw the ruling of the Ninth Circuit Court in a case in which the plaintiffs owned property which they resided on and which was located directly across the street from a landfill that belonged to the county (Healy and Tapick, 2004, 104). The Court determined that the plaintiffs did in fact have legal grounds to being a lawsuit for injury that was caused based on the fact that the county was disposing of ozone-destroying chemicals at the landfill and were doing so improperly, which was endangering not just the plaintiffs, but the world as well (Healy and Tapick, 2004, 105).

The lawsuit was able to be brought not only under the Clean Air Act but also under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (U.S., 2004, n.p.). The concurring opinion of Judge Gould indicated that the plaintiffs to the lawsuit could sue because of the global impacts that were seen on the stratospheric ozone layer that came from the way the defendants to the lawsuit mishandled the CFCs that they were supposed to be securing in their landfill. The Judge also made the observation from looking at past precedent that many courts had stated that plaintiffs could not bring a lawsuit if the problem that they were suing over was damaging to all people equally, and this was especially true of lawsuits involving individual taxpayers. However, in this case the plaintiffs had injury to them that could be considered to be 'concrete' and the damage to everyone else was a secondary issue, so the lawsuit was allowed to proceed.

Even though the amount of CFCs that were released by the mishandling at the landfill were only a tiny and basically insignificant part of the global problem, the danger to the plaintiffs in the form of an increased risk of suppressed immune systems, cataracts, and cancer was real and concrete, and this is why they were allowed to proceed with their lawsuit (Healy and Tapick, 2004, 112). The Judge was still skeptical that allowing the case to proceed might create a serious avalanche of lawsuits based on injuries from global pollution, he also reasoned that, if this were to happen, the Court system might become more serious about the issue and might pare down the lawsuits to only those where a plaintiff or plaintiffs actually had a concrete injury or chance at injury, as opposed to treating all 'global warming' lawsuits in the same manner.

While the destruction of the ozone layer is a highly significant issue, being allowed to sue for this type of issue may work to open the door for lawsuits that specifically cite global warming. At least some of the plaintiffs that are interested in filing lawsuits regarding global warming would have the legal standing to do so, according to the Court (Healy and Tapick, 2004, 91). These include Alaskan natives who are believed to have concrete injuries from the warming of the world's climate.

These natives will be able to file lawsuits under the Clean Air Act (CAA) or the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 (NEPA) (Healy and Tapick, 2004, 97). The strongest case for legal standing based on lawsuits for global warming is under the NEPA, and many new decisions that have been made in the federal courts regarding global warming have involved that Act. NEPA is a federal statute that requires agencies to assess the environmental impacts that they might see or expect if they are taking on 'major' federal projects. There can and will be arguments, of course, based on the wording of NEPA and based on the fact that it is 'only' a procedural statute (U.S., 2004, n.p.).

There are different ways that are used to determine whether someone can bring a lawsuit or has any standing under the Clean Air Act in order to be able to sue for issues such as global warming, and a crucial part of that decision is whether the authority for the EPA to regulate GHGs comes under the Clean Air Act (Healy and Tapick, 2004, 92). In other words, whether a person has a legal standing to bring a lawsuit in part is dependant on whether the Court agrees that Congress wanted a statute to give a particular agency (in this case the EPA) the legal standing and authority over the regulation of specific actions. In the Clinton Presidential term, the administrator of the EPA, Carol Browner, stated that the agency should have authority to regulate carbon dioxide and other GHGs under the Clean Air Act, even if the United States was not going to agree to or work with the Kyoto Protocol. Two individuals from the EPA general counsel agreed with Browner's assessment of the issue.

However, the Bush Administration in 2003 determined that the EPA did not have the authority to control or regulate the levels of carbon dioxide or other GHGs (Healy and Tapick, 2004, 89). This upset many different states, and in October of that same year Massachusetts became the lead petitioner along with 11 other states, 14 environmental groups, and five governmental agencies in the filing of eight separate petitions that have now been consolidated. These petitions were filed within the District of Columbia, and they challenged the EPA in its denial of a petition that was created to ensure regulation of GHGs coming from emissions from vehicles and a general counsel memo that stated that the EPA does not have authority to regulate GHGs in general under the Clean Air Act.

In addition to those petitions, in July 2004 eight different states and the city of New York joined in a public nuisance lawsuit that was filed against five large utility companies in the Federal District Court in Manhattan (Healy and Tapick, 2004, 120). These utility companies operated 174 power plants that were estimated to emit 646 million tons of carbon dioxide, which was a full 10% of the total for the nation. The lawsuit demanded that these companies reduce the carbon dioxide emissions each year for 10 years by a specific percentage.

In order to establish a basis for the lawsuit and to show that the carbon dioxide emissions are causing harm to the people of New York City and the people in those eight states, the lawsuit alleged global warming and stated that it was already causing reductions in the snow pack and higher temperatures overall, especially in the northern part of the continental 48 states. It was further stated that these harmful trends will continue to worsen and the defendants could slow this and help to minimize the harm by a reduction in their carbon dioxide emissions (Healy and Tapick, 2004, 109).