A climate of change

WELCOME words were heard on Monday as US President Barack Obama outlined his policy on tackling climate change and reducing his country’s dependency on imported oil. Until recently the laggard among industrialised nations on environmental issues, the US under Mr Obama promises a clean break from the policies of his predecessor. On the environmental front, the most charitable take on Mr Bush’s eight years in office would be that he and his cabinet were either misinformed or chose to live in a state of denial. But harsher critics would insist that his administration failed to resolve basic conflicts of interest and pandered to lobbyists representing the energy sector. Mr Obama’s stance is more clear-cut: it will be the interest of the American people and the welfare of the planet, not the influence wielded in Washington by lobbyists, that will hold centre stage in his scheme of things. We can only wish him well in his quest to bring about meaningful change.In what was possibly a dig at Mr Bush and his neo-con establishment, President Obama said on Monday that “My administration will not deny facts, we will be guided by them.” Mr Obama acknowledges that global warming is a reality, not mere conjecture. In this connection he has put forward a plan under which the US will double its output of renewable energy and put in place a new national grid that will deliver the increased load across the country. He has also directed the US Environmental Protection Agency to review requests by California, and the many other states that followed its lead, to introduce vehicle-emissions standards that are more stringent than existing federal regulations. TheBush administration had vetoed that proposal. President Obama has also asked that efforts be redoubled to manufacture cars that are more fuel-efficient and emissions-friendly.The one major snag, among many, that President Obama could run into stems from his insistence that the US will not accept a mandatory cap on greenhouse gas emissions until major polluters from the developing world, such as India and China, do the same. Under the Kyoto Protocol, compulsory emission caps are binding only on nations that are already at an advanced stage of industrialisation. There is some merit in the argument floated by developing countries that their historical contribution to greenhouse gases has been minimal compared to that of nations in the West. Imposing caps similar to those adopted by all developed countries (with the exception of the US) would unfairly retard their progress, they say, at a key stage of development. That said, global warming is a worldwide phenomenon and everybody must come on board and be on the same page. It is the developing countries, after all, that will be hit hardest by climate change.