Socialist Standard
August 2005
Page 7  |
|
|
|
Putting
business first
President George Bush II is nothing if not frank, at least on the Kyoto
Treaty. Interviewed by Sir Trevor McDonald on the eve of last month’s
G8 summit (ITV, 4 July) he had this to say of this treaty which aims to
timidly limit carbon emissions (one of the contributory causes of the
current global warming):
“I made the decision . . . that the Kyoto treaty didn’t suit our needs.
In other words, the Kyoto treaty would have wrecked our economy, if I
can be blunt . . . I walked away from Kyoto because it would damage
America’s economy, you bet. It would have destroyed our economy. It was
a lousy deal for the American economy.”
As the head of US capitalism’s political executive, his remit is to
protect and further the interests of the US capitalist class. The
reason why he and his advisers decided that the Kyoto Treaty would have
damaged the US economy was that America gets a higher proportion of
energy from burning coal and oil than its rivals, so that any
commitment to use other, more expensive sources of energy would have
cost the US proportionately more than these rivals and so reduced its
competitiveness vis-à-vis them.
That Kyoto would have advantaged their economies compared to America
may even have been at the back of the minds of the European political
leaders who promoted the treaty. If so, they miscalculated and may now
find that it is their economies that are going to be disadvantaged.
In any event, while it is clear that a question which concerns the
whole world such as the possible consequences of global warming can be
effectively dealt with only by unified action at a world level, it is
equally clear that this is not going to happen under capitalism. The
different capitalist states into which the world is divided have
different – and clashing – interests, such as have come to the surface
over Kyoto, which they will always put first. At most, all that can
happen under capitalism when a global problem arises is “much too
little, much too late”.
That the leaders of the capitalist States of Europe are just as willing
(if not just as frank about it) as Bush to put the interests of their
capitalist class first when it comes to environmental problems was
shown by a headline in the Times the following day: “Europe drops green
agenda to put life back into industry”. The article reported that,
under pressure from governments and from business lobbies, the European
Commission has put off proposals to deal with the problem of air
pollution:
“The shelving of the environment strategies marks a triumph for the
British Government, which has called on the Commission to stop
producing regulations that damage businesses. An impact assessment had
suggested that the air-pollution strategy alone would cost between €5.9
billion and €14.9 billion a year from 2020”.
Enough said.
|
|
|
To contents  To next
page
To
Socialist
Party
|
|