ENVIRONMENT: Green conventions yet to prove effective

By Pratap Chatterjee Reprint | | Print |

Pratap Chatterjee

WASHINGTON, Jan 2 1996 (IPS) - The good environmental news for 1996 is that on Monday the industrialised countries halted the production of chloroflourocarbons (CFCs) — chemicals that destroy the mantle of ozone that surrounds the planet, protecting it from the sun’s harmful ultra-violent radiation.

The bad environmental news for 1996 is that the production of carbon dioxide — a major contributor to the warming of the planet — is much higher than predicted.

Does this mean that the ozone layer is improving even as global warming is getting worse? Not so far. Preliminary data for 1995 show that both the ozone layer and the global climate have fared worse than expected.

This is despite the fact that two international environmental laws have been in place for some time to prevent these very environmental disasters — the 1987 Montreal Protocol for Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer and the 1992 Framework Convention on Climate Change.

“In an ideal world, the good news would be just so. But climate change and ozone depletion are not isolated phenomona. More carbon dioxide warms the lower atmosphere and causes higher ozone depletion,” says Kalee Kreider from Ozone Action, a Washington-based environmental group.

Many companies have substituted ozone-depleting CFCs with hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs). But both chemicals contribute to global warming.

“Conventions work to eliminate specific chemicals. Unfortunately, the real world is complex and interactive so progress on one chemical can be canceled out by increased production of another chemical,” adds Kreider.

Scientists from the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Agency (NASA) say that the data from 2,000 land-based weather-monitoring stations around the world show that ?995 was the hottest year of the 130 years for which information is available.

Meanwhile, the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) reported in September that the seasonal “hole” that opens up in the ozone layer over Antarctic at winter’s end was twice the previous year’s size — roughly the area of Europe.

This is about the same size as the hole that was opened up the year that Mount Pinatubo erupted in the Philippines. Scientists blamed a rapid increase in the size of the ozone hole that year on the ash and gases released by the volcano — and predicted that the hole would soon return to a more normal size.

Scientists say that the problem with any predictions is that there are numerous assumptions involved, many of which often turn out to be wrong.

Activists say that the latest data also show that global conventions are useless without effective regulation and enforcement.

Take global warming. In 1992, governments signed an agreement in Rio de Janiero to voluntarily cut back on the burning of fossil fuels, which produces carbon dioxide, to bring national emission levels down to those of 1990.

That relatively modest goal fell far short of the 60-percent cut in greenhouse emissions that scientists have warned is the minimum necessary to stabilise the global climate.

But even this target has proved very elusive. Preliminary data for 1995 shows that the United States produced 1,418 million metric tonnes of carbon emissions — 5.5 percent more than the country produced in 1990.

Skip Laitner of the Virginia-based American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy, wrote recently that much of the target could have been met easily if U.S. consumers had invested more in energy-efficient appliances and vehicles.

“The lagging efficiency gains are all the more ironic since earlier studies have shown that meeting the international goals will increase both employment and economic productivity,” he says.

But energy efficiency alone is not enough to check carbon emissions. History has shown that, although fuel efficiency for U.S. cars rose from 5.7 kilometres to 8.9 kilometres to the litre between 1969 and 1990, auto carbon emissions failed to come down.

Partly because of the associated cost-saving, U.S. drivers drove 2.4 trillion kilometres in 1990 — 50 percent more than the 1.6.trillion kilometres they logged in 1969. That pushed fuel total consumption from 242 billion to 273 billion litres.

The United States is not the only country to miss targets. Analysts say that Japan’s carbon emissions will exceed their 1990 levels by 5.75 percent in the year 2000.

The Canadians have already announced that they will miss the target by 10 percent, while unpublished memos from the European Union show that it expects to be off by six to eight percent.

The problems with fulfilling the climate change convention are two-fold. First, the convention is voluntary; second, governments continue to pay out large subsidies to industries that rely on fossil fuels.

The United States estimates that its subsidies for fossil fuels amount to between 10 and 15 billion dollars annually. Estimates for global subsidies range as high as 230 billion dollars a year.

Or take the depletion of the ozone layer. On Monday, companies in industrialised countries officially stopped all production of CFCs to comply with the Montreal protocol.

The problems with fulfilling this convention are also two-fold. First, the ban does not cover consumption. The result is a thriving smuggling racket.

CFC smuggling is already making headlines. Last month, the United States asked Costa Rica to extradite former Miami resident Bruce Burrell who was arrested in San Jose for allegedly trying to smuggle 19,000 cylinders of CFCs into the U.S.

U.S. government spies working on a covert operation called ‘Operation Cool Breeze’ discovered that an estimated five to ten thousand tonnes of CFCs are being smuggled in to this country each year.

Second, CFC substitutes, like HFCs, which are favoured by industry, also have an ozone-depleting effect.

This mean that companies like Maytag and Sanyo continue to market refrigerators that contain CFCs. It also means that companies like Dupont can buy and stockpile CFCs from non- industrialised countries, which have another ten years to phase- out CFCs under the Montreal accord.

“What this shows is that nothing short of global bans and strong regulation will work,” says Kreider.

ENVIRONMENT: Green conventions yet to prove effective

By Pratap Chatterjee Reprint | | Print |

Pratap Chatterjee

WASHINGTON, Jan 2 1996 (IPS) - The good environmental news for 1996 is that on Monday the industrialised countries halted the production of chloroflourocarbons (CFCs) — chemicals that destroy the mantle of ozone that surrounds the planet, protecting it from the sun’s harmful ultra-violent radiation.
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