Almost 20 years after the 1972 Stockholm Conference, the United Nations gathered and held what would come to be known as the Rio Earth Summit. The point of meeting in Rio was to establish guidelines for developed and developing countries as far as climate change protocol. Within historical context, Rio is significant because it began during the existence of the Soviet Union and then ended after the Soviet Union had collapsed. This left the U.S. without a Cold War framework to guide policymaking. At first hesitant to attend the Rio Earth Summit, President George H. W. Bush did end up going to Rio to attend negotiations. However, he was hesitant to sign the international treaty guiding global warming—the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Put simply, the “Bush administration was unwilling to provide less directed forms of foreign assistance associated with emissions reductions and sustainable development, a point of divergence from other industrialized nations” (181). Signing the treaty meant that the United States, a developed country, would be responsible for providing financial aid to developing countries that could not lower emission rates on their own dime. This was a problem for Bush Sr. and other U.S. officials—especially conservatives—who did not think it wise to sacrifice the wellbeing of our home economy to help a third world country, especially during a recession. The result of the reluctance of the U.S. to financially contribute to a developing country deepened the divide between the global north and global south. Author Joshua Howe of Behind the Curve writes that developing countries, when they agreed to terms made clear during UNCED, did so “under the assumption that the World Bank and various national and regional development agencies would provide financial assistance “over and above cur rent levels” to meet those goals” (177) whereas the United States, for example, did not agree with this expectation. Howe provides the example of William Broomfield, a Michigan congressman, who notably said, “We are being asked for more foreign aid at a time when the public clearly favors focusing on domestic issues” (179). In the end, Bush Sr. did sign the UNFCCC. However, the idea of a “no regrets” policy came to define how the administration handled climate change objectives. Instead of creating a “no regrets” idea around having no regrets about protecting and saving the planet, Bush Sr. and his fellow conservatives instead wanted to use an “economic rubric” to guide climate change decisions so that there were “no regrets” making changes if climate change ended up being a hoax. By discrediting science, they were able to keep a focus on economics rather than environmentalism.
When the Kyoto Protocol was introduced during Bill Clinton’s presidency, the country had moved further right politically. Clinton never even introduced the proposal to the Senate. This was in part due to the Byrd-Hagel Resolution, which stated that the Senate would not pass any treaty that “mandate new commitments to limit or reduce greenhouse gas emissions” without “new specific schedules to limit or reduce greenhouse gas emissions for Developing Country Parties” or “result in serious harm to the economy of the United States” (190). Sacrifice was not going to be made by the US capitalist country. This is why the government continues to reject international agreements on climate change—there is a strong opposition, especially from the right, to limiting our participation in the global economy. I think this article tied very nicely to last week’s article, as well, because we see a trend of entitlement and privilege without realizing we won’t all be able to maintain our righteous claim to overconsumption if the Earth dies and humans along with it. As Howe eloquently puts it, “Americans were unready and unwilling to sign an agreement ultimately aimed at changing the lifestyle they had worked for and defended for so long” (194).
Will Wright 