Tom Kando
I wrote this a while back, when anti-Americanism was still more virulent that it is now, since Obama took over the presidency.
But it is still fashionable to blame America for being the world’s greatest polluter, for making a greater contribution to global warming than any other country, and for our weak environmental consciousness. Now, don’t misunderstand me: I am acutely aware of the environmental catastrophe which faces our planet. I just finished reading Jared Diamond’s Collapse, and I am afraid that he is right: the world is in deep ecological trouble. I am an environmentalist through and through, and I feel that the world must radically alter (= reduce) its consumption and reproduction patterns, or else we will soon experience the fate of the dinosaurs.
The only thing to which I object is the perennial tendency to single out the US as exceptionally guilty of destroying the planet.
For example, take our failure to ratify the 1997 Kyoto Treaty. We have been terribly vilified for this, and presumably our stance will soon change now that Obama has replaced Bush. Fine. But it is rarely noted that we were by no means alone in refusing to ratify Kyoto (Australia and several others did likewise), and that our refusal was based - some might say reasonably - on exemptions from Kyoto requirements granted to China and other “developing” economies - even though they already pollute and warm up the planet more than we do.
In an excellent article reprinted in McGraw-Hill’s 2007-2008 Sociology Annual Edition, Lester Brown points out that in ABSOLUTE AMOUNTS, China has in many ways overtaken the US, consuming more raw materials and energy than we do in many areas. Only in oil consumption are we still ahead. Otherwise, in coal, steel production, grain consumption, paper, and in most other respects China is now ahead of us - as it is in overall CO-2 emissions and in general pollution.
But the blame-America crowd then retorts that on a per capital basis we are still far “guiltier.” After all, China has four times our population, so they should be allowed to pollute more.
Besides, they add, what moral right does the affluent West have, to prevent China and other rising societies from achieving the same standard of living as we enjoy? Isn’t this a case of “do as I say, not as I did”? I don’t know about morality, but I am certain that if 1.3 billion Chinese (plus 1 billion Indians, plus Indonesia, Brazil and the rest of the “rising” world) reach the West’s per capita level of consumption, humanity will simply die.
But back to the US role: Much as anti-Americans would like to overlook this, our country does NOT have the highest per capital energy consumption either. Canada is ahead of us, and so are some of the very affluent small Middle Eastern States - I forget which, some Gulf States such as Qatar maybe, Kuwait perhaps. And some small and very rich European countries may be vying with us in this regard as well. Sweden or Norway perhaps. Of course, the reason for Canada, Scandinavia and some Gulf States’ very high energy consumption is their climate. The former need to warm themselves a lot for much of the year, and in the Middle East they need to cool themselves down year around.
But my point is this: The anti-Americans want to hold America responsible BOTH ways: 1) if they can’t blame America for being the world’s Number One polluter in absolute terms, they say, “Oh, well, on a per capital basis we are still the worst,” an 2) if some other countries have a higher per capita energy consumption than we do, then the America-blamers turn around and say, “oh well, don’t worry so much about Canada, it doesn’t have as many people as America does, so their collective contribution to pollution isn’t as bad.
So America gets it both ways, when in fact it is (1) neither the world’s largest polluter in absolute terms, (2) nor so on a per-capita basis.
Anyway, now that I got this off my chest, let’s all get back to saving the planet. This is a problem for which all countries are responsible and a responsibility from which no country should be exempt.leave comment here
