Think Kyoto is hard?

Industry and business leaders, and the political spokespeople they rent, better get used to measures like Kyoto, because this is only the first of many steps and they get harder as we go along. The alternative to voluntary compliance is a lot worse.

by Kevin Potvin <kpotvin@republic-news.org>

The tortuous path taken by the Kyoto Accord in Canada in the eight years since it was negotiated provides a unique picture of how politics are played in this country. Kyoto, it turns out, gives us an almost perfect picture of politics because the unarguably urgent purpose Kyoto addresses, the sound methods the accord proposes, and the perfectly noble end results it envisions are easy to grasp and monumentally a matter of life and death. Any public statement made in opposition to Kyoto can therefore be isolated out as pure politics—and examined as such.

The Kyoto Accord is an amendment to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change first negotiated at the Earth Summit at Rio de Janeiro in 1992 and signed by Canada, the United States, and virtually all other countries in the world. The Convention contained an unambiguous admission that industrial activity was producing damaging climate change, and that all signatories would cooperate in reducing emissions of the responsible pollutants according to schedules and rates set forth in future negotiated accords.

It was agreed by all signatories that they would do so by enacting national legislation regulating and directing industries so that each country would produce less pollutants, and eventually, the world as a whole would generate less climate changing emissions. Kyoto is the first such accord and nearly all countries—141 of 194—have ratified it, including Canada. The United States has not.

Kyoto is only the second step of several that were initially envisioned, and contains obligations only for the most advanced, wealthiest, and industrialized nations to take the lead in making interventions in their economies to begin the process of inducing their industries to generate fewer damaging emissions. Countries like China, largely exempt in this first round from any reductions, would be held to the same standards as leading industrial countries in the next round.

It is one small step of many that will be necessary to eventually bring runaway global emissions under control, then to actually reduce those emissions back to levels that enable natural processes to repair already extensive damage. It is possibly too late and we may already have sealed our own fate on a planet with a shortened future. Nonetheless, we must try, and as conditions worsen, try harder. Ultimately, the series of accords in the Climate Change Convention envision a successful global industrial economy that maintains a stable and supportive global environment. It all begins with national governments taking small steps to intervene in their otherwise free economies to begin to steer industrial behavior toward a model of mature responsibility.

Fair enough. But then the politicking sets in. It came as a shock to Peter Foster of the National Post business section on Easter weekend when he learned the Liberal regime in Ottawa tacked a flier on their budget that officially declared carbon dioxide particles, released by such things as car engines, to be pollutants. This was really a clarification to close a potential loophole left open by lawmakers failing to note the obvious. Car companies would have pointed out that since carbon particles were not specifically identified as a pollutant, they would not have to build engines that generated less carbon particles.

Car companies, like all sociopaths, are like that. But closing that potential loophole with a bit of common sense, according to Stephen Harper, leader of the Conservatives, gives “ unlimited power [to the government] to implement Kyoto,” as though that were a bad thing. The issue for the Conservative Party, or rather the companies who finance that party, is not whether carbon is a pollutant or not, but whether companies or government should be the ones to decide such a question.

The Conservative Party would like companies to be the ones to decide. That way, carbon would not be defined as a pollutant, since it's something a lot of companies pollute with an awful lot in their day-to-day activities and it would be hard for them to stop. Never mind that elevated carbon pollution and the threat it represents to the survivability of the environment is one of the primary motivations behind people and governments around the world creating something like the Kyoto Accord.

Companies don't want to reduce their pollutants for the simple reason that it would cost money to do so, money that would partly come out of profits—the cash investors get to play with. Never mind that corporate profits have, the last 20 years, settled in at historic highs, and never mind that no matter which way you calculate it—in absolute dollars or in wealth relative to the average—the rich who comprise the vast bulk of investors have never been richer in world history.

If one were able to take each individual investor aside and ask him, there's a fair chance most might agree that they have enough money and that they don't really need more, and that, if getting more meant exposing the environment to the risk of catastrophic collapse, they would certainly choose to ease up on their company throttles. They all have grandchildren, after all.

However, there are programs running automatically in the heads of investors as well as externally throughout the boardrooms and management suites of the companies that investors own. One program running in the heads of investors compels them each to ensure they are subject to no restrictions, internally or externally imposed, that are not placed on the actions of any of their peers. Since any internally-imposed restriction is, by definition, unique to the person so restricted, no investor is ever going to impose such a restriction on himself. Therefore, we can never expect investors to alter the behavior of the companies they own through their own guilt, knowledge, or even enlightened self-interest, even if it were certain that raising production one more percent would cause all the air around the planet to get flung out to space. Investors will not take action of their own accord even on their deathbeds. Their internal programs won't allow it.

The other program running external to investors throughout the private economy ensures that corporate boards and management groups do their utmost every day to maximize profits. It is a matter of due diligence, legal obligations and professional training that they never divert from that one single-minded purpose. Like lawyers sworn to defend even the most indefensible person they know is guilty, professional managers and board members of corporations must maximize profits even if they all know for sure that by doing so, the planet's environment will surely collapse. If profits can be protected for one more quarter by arguing in public that scientists might not be measuring global warming accurately, for example, even if they know they are accurate enough to be sure global warming is real, managers must, as executives of their companies, make that argument or risk being fired from their job, with cause.

At first, it was discovered that the climate might be negatively affected by too much industrial waste. Company spokespersons, or the conservative party politicians they hired, or the executives in the top floor offices, said it can't happen, the climate is immune to our activity. It was shown that indeed industrialism could, and was, affecting the climate. Companies agreed, but then argued that sun-spots and volcanoes make industry's effects too small to worry about. Scientists showed that industry could have a large effect, and that climate change caused by industrial activity was well under way. Companies agreed, but then argued that the changes were part of natural Earth cycles. It was shown that these changes were larger than what occurs naturally, and were occurring outside expected cycles. Companies agreed the data showed that, but then argued that the measuring devices were faulty. Pictures showed huge parts of the polar ice caps melting, 10,000-year-old mountain glaciers disappearing, and the ozone layer disintegrating. Companies agreed these pictures were indeed alarming, but then argued that it was obviously too late to save things now. Science showed how we might anyway succeed in saving the planet if we act now in a big way. Companies agreed but then argued that such action would cause much more disruption to humans in lost jobs, reduced prosperity, and stalled industrial development.

On and on it can be expected to go, all other things, like legislation, remaining the same.

Each individual company spokesperson or hired-gun politician may, alone and away from microphones, completely agree that industrialism has produced effects that threaten the environment, and that massive changes in economic behavior are required to save the planet. But they themselves need to get the groceries home, do their email, and get their kid to hockey. They have a job, and that job is part of the program running throughout the economy: just as the trenches is no place to discuss the wisdom of war, the company boardroom is no place to discuss the wisdom of unbridled industrialism. They will act according to the rules, but they must maximize profit within those rules and never divert from that purpose.

We, and the planet, have one saving grace. So long as investors feel that no one else is enjoying an advantage they themselves lack, and so long as managers and board members of companies understand they have no choice but to adhere to firm and clear rules, it is just possible that a government, stiffened in its resolve with the backing of a large majority of constituents, could impose upon the industrial economy a code of conduct that ensures mature and responsible behavior that just might preserve the environment.

Companies, investors, executives and board members and the politicians they put in office—the business class, in short—may appear to have considerable power today. But we the people still own the police, the courts, and the jails, and most importantly, the legislature where new laws are made. All we really need are leaders who understand what power we still retain, a willingness to use it, and an ability to communicate to individual members of the business class in language they personally understand what lies in store for all of them if they find the obligations of the Kyoto Accord too difficult to accommodate.

What we need is someone who can go into the Four Seasons at lunch time and paint a picture of a gray-haired executive enjoying a visit from his grandson behind the bars of a prison. Or, if they still don't get it, perhaps someone more eloquent can tell the tale of how more than one head of hair literally turned white awaiting its turn at the guillotine in revolutionary France.

I mean, really, do they think we're just going to let them destroy it all without doing anything to them? Boys - don't make us do it. Because you know we will.

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