Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
commitments; if it had, Congress likely would not have approved their
budgetary components. Less than half a year away from the conference,
the administration found itself isolated and on the defensive. Conference
preparations continued to reflect a North-South polarization that under-
mined progress on the Earth Summit's five major initiatives, and the fall
of the Soviet Union had removed an important geopolitical incentive to
make a strong showing in Rio. In a U.S. election year, with no agreements
obviously forthcoming and potentially no treaties or conventions for a
head of state to sign, the increasingly unpopular American president was
understandably hesitant to associate himself with an international con-
ference on the environment that would expose him to criticism both at
home and abroad. If Rio was going to fail, Bush had no good reason to tie
himself to its failure.
the unfccc
In the end, however, George Bush did go to Rio. As expected, a constella-
tion of unfriendly newspaper editors, congressional Democrats, delegates
from the developing world and from Europe, and spokespeople for Ameri-
can and international environmental NGOs pilloried the president for
dragging his feet on environmental issues in favor of domestic corporate
profit.31
31
He was, as the
New York Times
put it, “the Darth Vader of the Rio
meeting.”
32
Ironically, EPA chief William Reilly, one of the prime advocates
for sending Bush to Rio and a strong voice in favor of progressive environ-
mental policy within the administration, also met a hostile reception. An
embarrassing internal administration memo undercutting Reilly's earnest
efforts led one sympathetic observer to characterize him as “a fig leaf for
a not very committed government.”
33
The administration weathered the
storm. On the second to last day of the meeting, President Bush signed the
convention that had, more than any other single objective at the confer-
ence, brought him to Rio in the first place: the U.N. Framework Conven-
tion on Climate Change.
Introduced in June of 1992, the UNFCCC was— and is— a nonbinding
international treaty designed to stabilize the concentration of greenhouse
gases in the earth's atmosphere, with the goal of “preventing dangerous
anthropogenic interference with Earth's climate system,” as defined by the
assessments of the IPCC. Signed initially by 154 nations, the treaty relies