Rhetorical bluster and empty goals don’t substitute for concrete action. That is a lesson from the fall of communism that we need to remember as we formulate environmental policies.
In the Soviet Union, leaders routinely announced dramatic goals. But their economic system contained no effective means of meeting such lofty targets. The result was wasted resources, cynical workers and a system in which everybody had to lie to everyone else. Not even reformer Michael Gorbachev could acknowledge that the system was broken.
Unfortunately, communist regimes are not the only ones that face the temptation to substitute rhetoric for action. We are seeing this at home and abroad in response to environmental problems.
In February, the European Union re-considered how to limit greenhouse-gas emissions. It reaffirmed a goal of 20 percent reductions in carbon emissions by 2020 compared with 1990 levels. It announced a higher target of 30 percent reductions if other industrialized nations also act. The German parliament supports a 40 percent reduction.
The media hailed EU announcements as “bold” and “tough.” Outgoing French President Jacques Chirac boasted of the EU’s resolve, comparing it favorably to inaction by the United States.
But the inconvenient truth is that the EU is failing to meet its Kyoto targets set a decade ago. Carbon emissions actually have risen since 2000 in most member countries.
We face similar temptations in our country. Members of both parties rose in applause when President Bush in his 2007 State of the Union speech called for a 20 percent reduction in gasoline use by 2017. However, other than tinkering with Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFÉ) standards, his administration has no concrete policies for meeting that goal. It rejects the measures – such as emissions taxes or tradable permit systems – that economists think most effective.
Many will remember that in his 2003 speech, the president described how hydrogen cars would solve all resource and environmental problems. Who can identify any significant progress toward that goal in four years?
Here in Minnesota a Republican governor vied with Democratic legislative leadership over how much of our state’s energy use must come from renewable sources by which date. They settled on requiring 25 percent by 2025.
Neither party, however, would go beyond a “well, the electric power and motor fuel companies will have to do this somehow” strategy. Neither dared advocate effective measures to motivate altered behavior on the part of ordinary households. Until that happens, change will be halting and expensive.
© 2007 Edward Lotterman
Chanarambie Consulting, Inc.