Siddiqi says the U.S. president signaled the change when he said in his speech, “America is on the verge of technological breakthroughs that will enable us to live less dependent on oil. And these technologies will help us be better stewards of the environment, and they will help us confront the serious challenge of global climate change.”
Siddiqi points out that it’s not only the executive branch of the U.S. government that is recognizing the reality of change in the global climate. He notes that within the first two weeks of the new Congress convening, at least eight bills proposing mandatory limits on greenhouse gas emissions were introduced in the Senate. Former Senator and Vice-President Al Gore’s documentary “An Inconvenient Truth” dealing with global climate change has been a box office hit, and many in the Congress have shared these views for years. Numerous U.S. states have already established their own specific targets for reducing greenhouse gases and increasing the share of renewable energy.
Energy independence is not a new goal in Washington. Siddiqi recalls that President Richard Nixon announced a “Project Independence” in 1973, President Jimmy Carter called the energy crisis during his term in office “the moral equivalent of war,” and subsequent presidents frequently stated the need to reduce America’s dependence on foreign oil. However, the costs of finding alternative fuels were always more expensive than Washington was willing to pay.
But what is new, according to Siddiqi, is an official admission in Washington that energy use has to be reduced not only for economic reasons, but also to address global climate change.
The vast majority of scientists agree that greenhouse gases, predominately carbon dioxide emissions from the burning of fossil fuels, are the major cause of global climate change. Many point a finger at the U.S. as the largest contributor to that problem. Siddiqi says “the United States has been the largest emitter of CO2 for the last hundred years or so … (and) its unwillingness to limit such emissions has been a major obstacle to implementing a worldwide agreement to address global climate change.” He notes that although the U.S. signed the Tokyo Protocol, a modest step toward curtailing greenhouse gas emissions by industrialized countries, it never ratified the treaty. That inaction allowed many other industrialized countries to ignore implementing the Protocol as “there was no point in their imposing economic hardships on their population, if the largest emitter in the world was not doing anything to curb its emissions.”
That rapidly growing economies such as China and India were not obligated to take similar steps toward emissions curbs under the Tokyo Protocol as those required for the major industrialized countries, only served to allow the U.S. and others to ignore the agreement and to keep burning larger amounts of gas emitting fuels. Projections, at first glance, may be used to support the U.S. stance.
Siddiqi says, “China’s emissions of CO2 are likely to overtake those of the United States sometime during the next decade. India’s emissions are likely to overtake Japan’s during that same period.” From that viewpoint, he admits, “the case is strong that at least the large developing countries such as China and India should also start curbing their emissions.” This is something that neither Beijing nor New Delhi is ready to do as both countries race to increase the standard of living of their people.
But, Siddiqi says there is another way to view the problem. “If we take into consideration the fact that China’s population i
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