US blind eye on climate change

Florida could be threatened if seas rise rapidly

BBC News Online's Kate Goldberg considers what impact the continuing US election chaos - and the next president, whoever he may be - will have on global warming.

As the dispute over the US presidential election drags on, a much bigger debate is generating heat at the Hague climate conference.

Washington is at loggerheads with the EU and much of the rest of the world about how best to save the planet from the potentially devastating effects of global warming.

But the US delegation is in a political no-man's land, not knowing whether George W Bush or Al Gore will be the next president.

The two men take quite different approaches to climate change:

• George W Bush, a former oilman, denies the existence of global warming. He is opposed to the Kyoto Protocol, which commits the industrialised world to cutting emissions of greenhouse gases.
• Al Gore styles himself as an environmental pioneer. He says he is committed to ratifying the Kyoto Protocol - and played a key part in drawing up the agreement in 1997.

Without the agreement of the US - the world's biggest polluter - there is little hope that any reduction in greenhouse gases will be achieved.

Court of public opinion

For much of the rest of the world, the most important result of the Hague conference will be a heightened public awareness about climate change.

We seem to be the only country that is not convinced of the reality of global warming. It reminds me of the fellow who said: I'm not crazy, everybody else is

News Online user Jay Vinsel from US

But not so in the US. Since 7 November, the nation has been obsessed with one thing only: the ongoing election dispute.

Roger Chambers e-mailed BBC News Online from New York.

"With the current deadlock in the presidential elections, this is getting very little coverage in US mainstream TV media, and it is even less likely that there will be any serious discussion, or that the Senate will ratify the Kyoto proposals", he wrote.

Americans are primarily focused on the election result

Insofar as Americans are taking part in the debate, many who e-mailed us agree with Mr Bush that there is insufficient scientific evidence of climate change to merit potentially costly changes in lifestyle.

Jay Vinsel, also from the US, writes that this is because "the US is in a state of denial about global warming".

"We seem to be the only country that is not convinced of the reality of global warming. It reminds me of the fellow who said: 'I'm not crazy, everybody else is'," he wrote.

Unpopular policies

But whoever emerges as the next president, the US Congress - which has a slim Republican majority in both houses - has refused to ratify the Kyoto Protocol, unless the developing world also cuts carbon emissions.

Top CO2 polluters

US

China

Russia

Japan

India

Germany

"I'm not going to let the US carry the burden for cleaning up the world's air, like the Kyoto treaty would have done," Mr Bush said during one of the televised presidential debates.

Cutting carbon emissions could have painful economic consequences for the US, particularly if it is not allowed to engage in "carbon trading" to reach its targets.

Florida could be facing more than just political storms

Yet far from cutting carbon emissions, the US has in fact increased them by more than 10% since 1990. With only 4% of the world's population, the US produces nearly 25% of heat-trapping gases.

Mr Gore, for his part, has identified climate change as the biggest environmental threat facing humanity in his 1992 book, Earth In The Balance.

But the vice-president has done little to act on his beliefs over the past eight years. For the delegates at the Hague climate conference, the prospects for total co-operation from across the Atlantic look bleak.