A Coalition of the Unwilling

States of (In)Action: The Strand of Political Leadership

Recognizing the gross levels of carbon addiction throughout the Western world begs another simple point about the cross-Atlantic divide: Political leadership matters.

It's almost too easy to trace our current climate gulf back to the divergences between George W. Bush and Blair. "The two guys have a very different relationship to the scientific community," explained Brooklyn-born Oxford researcher William Motley. "On the one hand, you have a president who willfully ignores or doesn't know how to cope with scientific data, just like when it comes to evolution and intelligent design. On the other hand, you have a prime minister who engages with scientists, understands what the wealth of data reveals about the effects of greenhouse gases and turns to the public to convey a necessary sense of urgency."

Motley joked that in order to lead the fight against global warming, you first need to believe in it. Blair, no environmental he-man, cleared this hurdle over half a decade ago, calling the phenomenon "a challenge so far-reaching in its impact and irreversible in its destructive power that it alters radically human existence." But as recently as last June, Bush still waffled about the scientific validity of man-made climate change, putting his faith in Michael Crichton's best-selling novel about a global warming conspiracy over a definitive report by the National Academy of Sciences released that same month. Despite his supposed agnosticism on this subject, Bush mustered the leadership skills to thwart national caps on greenhouse gas emissions. He proved equally feisty on the global stage, earning America its lone-star status as the only developed nation besides Australia to oppose the Kyoto Protocol. Even in his recent State of the Union address, which many considered an overdue about-face, Bush mentioned "global climate change" only once in 49 minutes, offering a tepid energy initiative that's about as ambitious as a middle school science fair project. In fact, A U.N. document released in March, "The U.S. Climate Action Report," indicates that Bush's flat-footed climate policy will result in carbon emissions climbing 11 percent from 2002 to 2012.

Meanwhile, Blair has fought to strengthen the European Union emissions trading scheme, "radicalize" Kyoto and amplify the effects of the controversial Stern Review -- a 700-page battle cry on the economics of global warming that claims unchecked carbon emissions could cost the world $3.68 trillion per year and create 200 million refugees. While many accuse Blair of spin-doctoring -- a fair charge for rhetoric that flies faster than it can walk -- others contend that the PM's climate leadership smacks of age-old imperial grandeur. "British politics of left and right still feel the need to talk presumptuously in terms of 'leading the world,' " writes journalist David Cox. "Cecil Rhodes and Lord Palmerston might have considered [Blair's climate agenda] over-ambitious."

Blair's bravado echoes in his recent decision to sidestep the White House and work directly with state and local leaders in the U.S., launching a transatlantic carbon market with California's Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. Many more options for U.S.-UK cooperation have suddenly popped up now that the Democrats have won control of Congress. The party of climate change believers recently introduced four bills in the Senate to tackle global warming, all demanding mandatory caps on greenhouse gases. House Democrats have been even quicker to the plate, passing the Clean Energy Act of 2007 -- a bill to funnel taxpayer money away from the oil industry and into renewable energy -- within their first 100 hours in control.

But full-blown optimism would be overkill. Amid all the cheers about baby steps on Capitol Hill, few pundits have acknowledged the Democrats' continued ties to the very same corporate interests -- agribusiness, automobiles, lumber -- that stoked mammoth carbon emission increases on Bill Clinton and Gore's watch. Initiatives in the UK deserve to be treated with similar skepticism, according to Ragnar Lofstedt, an expert on risk management from the Harvard School of Public Health who warns against glorifying British climate rhetoric. The real leadership, he told me, is happening elsewhere in Europe -- with German home insulations, Danish wind farms, Greek solar panels. Cynical about the British prime minister's motivations for recent climate jeremiads, Lofstedt remarked: "Climate change leadership was a way for Labour Blair to gain the green vote initially. Then it became a way for him to keep the green vote. Look at [him] becoming even greener following the strengthening of the Tories."

But a democracy is only as good as its people, right? And so Lofstedt's assertion -- that Blair is merely pandering to his constituents' pleas -- only takes us back a step, to the neglected question of how Brits came to demand such cheeky things of their leader in the first place. How is public opinion on environmental issues really formed in an era of scientific specialization? What makes people care when it's so much easier to dillydally? This brings us to the heart of the cross-climate divide: two very different philosophical beliefs about the relationship among science, the media and public consciousness.

Next Page: A Tale of Two Medias: The Strand of the Denial Industry