The Bush administration had a climate policy referred to as “no regrets”. Focused on the economy, this plan was uncertain of the new science of climate change and advocated for a traditional environmental remediation plan that holds up to a cost versus benefit analysis (183). Climate change, like many other policies, revolved around the economic state of the United States, and any action brought on to curb the environmental damage was seen as a threat to that economic state. Thus, heavy spending on sustainable development went against Bush’s policy (184). The hesitancy to sign the Kyoto Protocol was due to this resistance from the US government and its fiscal conservatism that grew after the Cold War. Additionally, weakened belief in climate science and the debates over previous environmental international agreements led to the failure of the Kyoto Protocol (194). Specifically, the US debates over the UNFCCC from a few years prior entered the Kyoto Protocol debates (187). While Clinton’s administration and democrats in power pushed for change within Bush’s no-regrets, fiscally conservative policy, conservatives argued that the “science was not yet ‘in’” (188). Ultimately, Bush’s policy on climate and the desire for fiscal conservancy led to the hesitancy in the signing of the Kyoto Protocol.
The United States has remained hesitant to enter into international agreements on Climate Change. The economy drives the politics of the United States. And with climate change, the US government sees any agreement that requires heavy spending towards climate change as a threat to its economy (184). The US is not going to risk its economic standing to help fight the degradation of the Earth. There is also a growing trend in US politics to distrust science. This likely stems from early climate change agreements. US conservative politicians saw the science as too new, and their disbelief weakened the scientific consensus (194). This is still a really big problem in our government when it comes to climate change. A lot of people don’t believe in it and actively deny any scientific findings. These scientific uncertainties justified not entering into agreements, such as the Kyoto Protocol, because it would lead to an economic disaster (188). Now, scientific uncertainties and the outright denial of science have spread to things beyond climate change, such as healthcare. I think it’s bad when the government stops listening to experts and starts ignoring science. As Howe put it at the end of his article, the economy and free markets won in the United States, and CO2 emissions are still on the rise (196).
Will Wright 