Prepared Remarks by Malcolm Wallop before the Casey Institute of the Center for Security Policy’s Symposium

“The Implications of the Global Climate Change Treaty
for the U.S. Economy, Sovereignty and National Security”

“Beyond Kyoto”

Ever since the global warming scare was created about a decade ago, environmentalists have
scarcely been able to conceal their glee. At long last, they had a crisis of such magnitude that
mankind would be forced to change its greedy and spendthrift ways. Two centuries of
ever-increasing energy consumption would have to come to an abrupt halt or the planet would be
fried. Man would have to forsake the dubious benefits of industrial civilization and return to a
simpler style of life more in harmony with nature.

To quote just one example from a book published in 1991 that artfully suggests the
environmentalists’ underlying glee: “Minor shifts in policy, marginal adjustments in ongoing
programs, moderate improvements in laws and regulations, rhetoric offered in lieu of genuine
change — these are all forms of appeasement, designed to satisfy the public’s desire to believe that
sacrifice, struggle, and a wrenching transformation of society will not be necessary.”

Contrast that hyperventilated passage with President Clinton’s announcement on October 22nd of
the proposal to control greenhouse gas emissions that the United States will take to the bargaining
table at Kyoto. The president proposed to roll back manmade greenhouse gas emissions to 1990
levels by around 2010 through what he called “win-win innovations and commitments.” Most of
these innovations are already available according to the president, such as solar panels, fluorescent
light bulbs, and a new way to power automobiles that Secretary of Energy Federico Pena had just
announced the previous day that will double fuel efficiency and lower pollution by 90%.
Nonetheless, our generous and foresightful federal government will provide five billion dollars for
research and development and target tax incentives to encourage energy efficiency and
conservation. Another innovation will be creating an international trading system in emission
permits, which will, it is claimed, lower the extra cost of building new industrial capacity virtually
to pocket change.

Mr. Clinton concluded: “If we do it right, protecting the climate will yield not cost, but profits;
not burdens, but benefits; not sacrifice, but a higher standard of living. There is a huge body of
business evidence now showing that energy savings gives better service at lower cost with higher
profits.” Secretary Pena summarized the Administration’s program more succinctly: “Our goal is
to have it both ways.”

So which is it to be? A wrenching transformation of society or a win-win program that raises our
living standards by lowering our energy consumption? Are we going to be forced to dismantle
industrial civilization or will wearing sweaters and installing thermal windows do the trick? And
whichever it is, will it save the planet or are the children and grandchildren, that the Clinton
Administration ceaselessly refers to as the justification for their policies, doomed to fry because
we selfishly refuse to restrain our appetite for central heating, electric lights, and big sport utility
vehicles?

Before I address these questions perhaps I should mention that the quotation about the necessary
wrenching transformation of society comes from a book of apocalyptic prognostications called
“Earth in the Balance.” The author was then-Senator Albert Gore, Jr.

The fact that the prophet of the wrenching transformation of society and the arch-proponent of
minor shifts, marginal adjustments, moderate improvements, rhetoric offered in lieu of genuine
change, in short of all forms of appeasement — the fact that these two gentlemen serve together as
vice president and president of the United States illustrates the major theme I want to pursue
today. At every level and in every aspect of the global warming debate, there are, I believe,
divergences between rhetoric and reality so severe that the whole house of cards is doomed to
collapse.

It has taken all the hysteria and fear mongering that Vice President Gore and his allies in the
environmental movement could conjure up to get the nations of the world to Kyoto. And now
that we are on the brink of signing a treaty, we find that the Clinton Administration’s proposals
are mere pipsqueaks and entirely inadequate to addressing the magnitude of the alleged problem.
Having said that I think the process is doomed to collapse, let me caution that I do not think that
we can relax, sit back, and watch it crumble. Although the consequences of failing to create a
global greenhouse gas regime will not be as disastrous as the consequences of succeeding to
create such a regime, they could be disastrous nonetheless.

Later this afternoon, we will hear from three experts — Dr. Fred Singer, Mr. David Luke, and Mr.
Fred Smith — on the scientific, economic, and national sovereignty aspects of the global warming
debate. I would like to touch on all three of these areas in order to illustrate my theme.

Let me begin with the science behind the global warming scare. President Clinton in announcing
the Administration’s proposal to take to the Kyoto negotiations said that: “The vast majority of
the world’s climate scientists have concluded that if the countries of the world do not work
together to cut the emission of greenhouse gases, then temperatures will rise and will disrupt the
climate.” Our major newspapers, news magazines, and television networks have picked up this
drumbeat. For instance, the Washington Post ran a lengthy series of articles last week that began
with the headline across the top of the front page: “Consensus Emerges Earth is Warming — Now
What?” Or as Time Magazine put it: “The fact that the world is warming, in short, is
unmistakable, and the argument made by some scientists that it’s just a natural phenomenon has
been dashed by new evidence.”

The myth that scientists have reached a consensus was largely created by a joint letter circulated
by an environmental pressure group, Ozone Action. Over twenty six hundred alleged scientific
experts on global warming have signed this letter. It is quoted and referred to endlessly as putting
an end to the debate. Citizens for a Sound Economy recently analyzed the 2,600 signers. They
concluded that fewer than ten percent had any expertise at all in any scientific discipline related to
climate science. Among those who have lent their prestige to this letter, CSE discovered a plastic
surgeon, two landscape architects, a hotel administrator, a gynecologist, seven sociologists, a
linguist, and a person whose training was in traditional Chinese medicine. Oh yes, they did find
one professional climatologist among the 2,600, and I agree that we should take his considered
opinion seriously.

Forgotten amidst all the hysterical attacks on those scientists who, like Fred Singer, express
skepticism about manmade global warming is the fact that the official science itself has moved
away from the doomsday scenario. The Toronto Statement of June 1988 accepted and publicized
the scientific estimates from the 1985 Villach Conference. And these predictions were indeed
scary: temperature increases of eight-tenths of a degree Celsius per decade or a total of over three
degrees Celsius by 2030 and a rise in sea levels of between twenty and one hundred fifty
centimeters.

However, the first report of the International Panel on Climate Change lowered these predictions
from eight-tenths down to three-tenths of a degree Celsius per decade or a total of only one and
two-tenths degree by 2030 and a sea level rise of only fifteen to forty centimeters. The 1995
IPCC report lowered these predictions even further to two-tenths of a degree per decade or
eight-tenths of a degree total by 2030 and a sea level rise of five to thirty five centimeters.

The political debate over what to do about global warming has proceeded as if these progressively
lower predictions of the IPCC don’t exist. Indeed, it is essential for the prophets of global
catastrophe that these figures never be noticed by the public. Thus the constant barrage of
propaganda about consensus. If a scientific consensus has been reached, it is in the scientific
panel of the IPCC, and the consensus is that global warming is a much more distant problem than
originally thought. Practically speaking, this is not too different from what the skeptics have
contended all along.

An additional point that must be made is that the entire debate has been framed by the
environmentalists as how to avoid the negative consequences of any global warming that may
occur. But global warming may have numerous beneficial effects. For a start, more carbon
dioxide in the air means increased plant growth, which means increased food production and
greater biological diversity.

The Administration is well aware of how shaky the science is. But then this whole phony exercise
is not really about saving the planet from frying. Global warming is being used to advance
another, ulterior agenda, which is to expand government control over people’s lives. As Under
Secretary of State and former Senator Timothy Wirth so elegantly put it: “Even if the theory of
global warming is wrong, we will be doing the right thing in terms of both economic policy and
environmental policy.”

So next let me turn to one side of greater government control over our lives, namely the economic
implications of any deal reached at Kyoto. While it has been necessary to preach gloom and
doom on the scientific front in order to move the political debate, it has been necessary to
minimize the possible economic consequences of any global greenhouse gas regime. The Clinton
Administration has on the one hand professed complete faith in the predictions far into the next
century of highly speculative and comparatively primitive computer climate models, while on the
other hand it has dismissed numerous studies of the painful short-term economic costs of reducing
fossil fuel consumption because the models used are inadequate. After all, some ingenious person
may perfect cold fusion tomorrow and thereby confound all the economic forecasts.

There is a reality here that no amount of clever rhetoric can get around. Energy use is directly
related to standard of living. The United States does indeed consume the most energy of any
nation in the world. The United States is also the richest country in the world. Americans live in
bigger houses. They drive bigger cars. Limiting energy consumption will inescapably make us
poorer.

This past summer the U.S. Senate put President Clinton on notice. The Senate passed a
resolution by a vote of ninety-five to none that essentially says that the Senate will not ratify any
treaty that exempts developing nations from binding greenhouse gas limits. This resolution, which
was offered by Senators Robert Byrd of West Virginia and Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, recognizes
that it is pointless to reduce our own greenhouse gas emissions, while rapidly expanding
economies, such as China’s and India’s, are increasing their own emissions. And it also
recognizes that the result of such a system will be to transfer energy intensive industries to exempt
countries. Unfortunately, it also leaves open the possibility that cuts in our own standard of living
are acceptable as long as similar cuts are made in everyone else’s.

President Clinton has responded to the challenge posed by the Byrd-Hagel resolution in
characteristically ingenious fashion. First, the proposals he made last month can largely be
implemented by executive actions without submitting a treaty for ratification. For instance, the
president can raise auto fuel efficiency standards by using the regulatory powers he already
possesses. Other parts of his package will require only piecemeal congressional approval.

Second, the president has agreed that developing nations must be included in the regime at some
point, and he has begun the process of buying them off by offering to transfer nuclear reactor
technology to China. Note that building more nuclear reactors in this country in order to lessen
our dependence on fossil fuels is entirely unacceptable to the environmentalists, but can be
overlooked if it is the price for Chinese participation.

All this maneuvering can be admired for its cleverness. However, if global warming really is a
looming catastrophe, then President Clinton’s proposals are a joke. And indeed the whole Kyoto
process is a joke. Any agreement that can possibly be reached at Kyoto will do nothing or next to
nothing to control greenhouse gas emissions, but it may accomplish this nothing at great
economic cost.

Which raises the question, What is the point of this apparently pointless exercise? And that brings
me to the third topic we are here to discuss today, namely the implications of a global greenhouse
gas regime for our national sovereignty.

In the run-up to the final negotiations in Kyoto in early December very little thought has been
given to what will happen after an agreement is reached. How will this agreement be
implemented? Perhaps everyone is assuming that the signatory countries, inspired by the challenge
of saving the world, will be on the honor system. For those of us who doubt that the honor
system will work any better here than it has in any other area of international relations, something
more will be required. In short, an enforcement power.

Yet another United Nations bureaucracy is about to be created. Since the environmentalists know
that no Kyoto agreement will do much if anything to prevent global warming, I must conclude
that their immediate and real goal is to use the global warming issue and the Kyoto process to
begin to create a global environmental regime. Environmentalists have long dreamt of such a
regime that could place limits on human aspirations and achievements through centralized global
planning. In a recent column, Walter Williams quoted a professor from Amherst College named
(appropriately) Leo Marx: “On ecological grounds, the case for world government is beyond
argument.”

I don’t think we need to speculate much about what this global environmental regime might look
like because, as I said earlier, I believe the whole project is doomed to collapse. The reason is
that because the economic stakes are so high, the temptation to cheat is correspondingly high.
Consequently, any enforcement authority will have to be commensurately powerful, that is to say
very powerful indeed, if it is successfully to compel reductions in economic activity.

The world’s nations are simply too robust to buckle under to centralized energy planning to any
significant degree. However, the probable failure of a Kyoto agreement to ration energy on a
worldwide basis does not mean, at least in my view, that our story has a happy ending.

The collapse of the process begun at Kyoto could lead to grave problems among nations. A
period of misunderstanding, of bickering, and of recriminations is likely. While I cannot pretend
to foresee the course that these international tensions may take, experience suggests that the
problems posed by Kyoto for the international order may reverberate into areas far removed from
environmental policy. Some of the most dangerous periods in international relations have
occurred when utopian projects have broken down.

Furthermore, the project may fail, but the institutions created to achieve the goal will remain. At
the very least we will be left with a massive new United Nations environmental bureaucracy in
search of a mission. And therefore, even if the environmentalists’ attempt to impose centralized
control fails in the first instance, they will have succeeded in putting in place an institution that can
serve both as chief international lobbyist for global environmental government and as the
cornerstone of just such a regime.

The challenge before us is that the war does not end, but rather begins after Kyoto. Whatever
agreement is cobbled together there will not create and set up the institutions to manage and
enforce that agreement. All those battles will remain to be fought. And we are going to have to
fight them every step of the way.

— End of Prepared Remarks —