Dialogue: Environment the big loser in race to win presidency

By KEITH SUTER*

Al Gore, the Democratic candidate in the November United States presidential election, wrote the longest-ever political campaign document. But he has failed to live up to the ideas he set out. Can we expect him to do any better this time around?

In 1992, the then Senator Gore wrote Earth in the Balance: Forging a New Common Purpose (a book of more than 400 pages). A few months later, after Bill Clinton's election victory, he became Vice-President. But very little of the book's many recommendations have been implemented in the past eight years.

Indeed, many of Gore's criticisms of Republican presidents Reagan (1980-88) and Bush (1988-92) could almost as easily be applied to the Clinton Administration. For example, he talks about the Bush Administration's poor performance at the 1992 United Nations conference on the environment and development. But there have been few environmental successes for the Clinton Administration since 1992.

There are four main reasons for Gore's failure. First, this is not a good era for grand plans. Gore talks about the need for a global Marshall Plan in which countries will work with each other to protect the environment.

But nothing contained in the final section of the book has been introduced by the Clinton Administration. The political mood of this new era is against such a style. This is an era of cynicism, small government, law taxes, individualism and electoral self-interest.

Second, the US Congress is isolationist. Many members of Congress do not believe the US has any responsibility to assist other countries - or the global environment.

The people who created the original Marshall Plan in the late 1940s had seen the way that international cooperation defeated Hitler, and they had become afraid of the communist threat from Moscow. They wanted to learn the lessons of history and the dangers created by the US being isolationist in the 1920s and 1930s.

But many members of Congress have not been overseas as tourists - let alone as soldiers. They are part of the new wave of isolationism as the US reduces its role in international cooperation. For example, the original Marshall Plan meant the US gave "foreign aid" worth 2 per cent of its gross national product a year; now the US is giving less than 0.2 per cent.

The US is still the UN's largest single debtor. Therefore, most members of Congress are not willing to support grand schemes to help the environment.

Third, Americans are not willing to change their style of living. At the 1992 UN conference, the Bush Administration said that: "The US standard of living is not up for debate." Nothing has changed. The US has 4.8 per cent of the world's population but produces 26 per cent of the greenhouse gases.

Finally, the US has little international influence on environmental policy. It is important for damaging the global environment but it has little influence on global environmental policy. Indeed, most decisions that now affect the environment are made outside national governments, such as the consumer demands created and satisfied by transnational corporations.

Even within the UN, the UN environment programme is a small organisation, and it has a smaller budget than the international spending of Greenpeace.

Therefore, there is little foreign government support for the grand plans set out by Al Gore. Indeed, there has been little formal governmental debate of his ideas. Some environmental non-government organisations have supported them. But not even the US's closest political allies (such as Britain or Japan) have supported the ideas outlined in Gore's book.

If Gore has failed on the environment during the past eight years, would a Bush Administration be any better? No. If George W. Bush wins in November, he will be surrounded by advisers with poor records on protecting the environment. American environmental non-government organisations would prefer a Gore victory.

Whoever becomes president in November - no matter how much he promises to help the environment - will still be blocked by Congress and the refusal of most Americans to change their lifestyle.

The only thing certain about the November election is that there will be little benefit for the global environment. Whoever wins in November, the global environment will be a loser.

* Keith Suter is a senior fellow of the Global Business Network Australia.