President George W. Bush has once again come under fire from green groups since he announced the Kyoto Treaty signed in Japan is unfair to the United States and cannot be ratified. His opinion is in complete agreement with the U.S. Senate, which voted unanimously three years ago to reject the treaty because it placed significant burden on the United States to meet emission standards that other countries were not being forced to meet.
The Kyoto Protocol assumes that global warming exists and that there is a cause-and-effect relationship between carbon dioxide emissions and global heating. No such relationship has been proven to exist, yet environmental zealots from around the world are trying to shove Kyoto down the American throat.
Significant disagreement exists in the scientific community over the existence of global warming. Because the media almost never present the other side of the argument, I feel it my duty to present some facts about world climate change.
According to Dr. Kenneth Green, environmental director of the Reason Public Policy Institute:
"Our ability really to know what the climate is doing is limited by a short observational record and by the uncertainties involved in trying to figure out what the climate was like in the past or might be like in the future, for comparison with recent climate changes.
While the Earth's climate has been evolving and changing for over four billion years, recordings of the temperature only cover about 150 years . . . In fact, temperature records are spotty before the 1950s and only cover a tiny portion of the globe mostly over land."
When the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change recently released its global warming report — a report many critics of Bush's environmental policies have cited — 14 international experts gathered on Capitol Hill to review it.
They unanimously concluded that it contained systematic errors and omissions bordering on scientific fraud. The report omitted that carbon dioxide levels, a major greenhouse gas of concern, was actually more prevalent in the pre-industrial era than it is today. In addition, the report used only surface temperature instead of satellite and balloon records, which do not indicate significant warming.
In fact, the little global warming that we are experiencing is, frankly, minute. It also should not be a surprise as it is following the "little ice age."
OK, so even if I give in a little and ignore a plethora of scientific argument and say global warming exists, then what? Determining the causes of global warming and the effects of global warming is even more difficult and more debatable.
So many factors go into determining the weather, and if we cannot accurately predict the weather for a period greater than 48 hours, how can we accurately predict the weather 100 years from now? And if we are unsure as to the existence of global warming, its causes, its effects, and whether it exists, why should the United States sign a treaty that could unilaterally disarm its economy? The Kyoto Protocol fails to require developing countries, such as China and India, to adhere to any emission standard.
Developed on the basis of spotty data and deeply flawed analytical models, the Kyoto treaty, if implemented, would produce only one certain result — severe harm to the U.S. economy. As Wall Street Journal columnist James Glassman has noted, "The U.S. could meet the Kyoto targets only by sharply increasing the price of fossil fuels. . . . [T]he growth of gross domestic product in the U.S. would be cut by more than half as businesses moved offshore to escape the high tax."
President Bush has been right to reject the Kyoto Treaty. In effect, Bush has rejected moving American jobs overseas, rejected $3-gallons of gas, and has rejected skyrocketing home heating bills.
Though the media has fallen for the liberal environmental line, we must not. More research must be done before we could even contemplate signing the Kyoto Protocol, and we must never sign it if competing countries like China are not held to equal standards.
President Bush has also recently come under fire for his plan to open up space in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for drilling. The opponents of such a plan argue that this would tarnish our nation's natural beauty.
They seem to ignore that modern technology makes possible greatly expanded oil and gas drilling on federal lands without environmental damage.
A fatal flaw of the Clinton administration was its failure to form a national energy policy. Ten years ago we imported 40 percent of our crude oil as compared to today when we import about 60 percent of our crude oil. Unfortunately, we are becoming increasingly reliant on OPEC and the Middle East for our sources of oil.
In addition to the problem of ballooning trade deficit for oil, the current level of oil imports can easily produce shortages of fuel, oil, and gas if the OPEC decides to further tighten its grip.
A national energy policy is badly needed and the Bush administration as cited the formation of such a policy as its top priority. Domestic oil production is a necessity; we must open up these plentiful oil reserves to drilling in order to avoid a major future oil crisis.
If gas becomes too limited and expensive, those less well off will not be able to heat their homes in the winter and people will become immobile because they won't be able to afford to drive their cars.
In order to avoid a potentially disastrous situation, we must immediately open up some lands to drilling while investigating alternative energy sources, such as clean coal technology and nuclear and solar energy.
The rejection of the Kyoto Protocol and the opening up of lands to drilling are good policy even though the liberals demagogue the issue and portray conservatives as enemies of the environment.
Bush has used science and technology as the basis of his energy and environmental policy instead of ceding to the pressure of extreme environmentalists, Al Gore, and The New York Times.
Whatever the political consequences of standing for principle and science, Bush cannot yield to this dangerous Green Machine.
