India and China must lead from the front
The world should not be held to ransom because the United States will not take climate change seriously
United States President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Paris climate accord has been met with angst from Western allies, the media and the foreign policy establishment, who have framed the move as his abandonment of US global leadership in pursuit of his nationalistic ‘America First‘ foreign policy.The unfortunate truth, however, is that the US has never been a leader on the issue of climate change, nor the wider question of sustainability.
After former US president Jimmy Carter worried that “too many of us now tend to worship self-indulgence and consumption”, Ronald Reagan criticised the whole idea that constrained resources could impact the economy. He said that there were “no such things as limits to growth”, and it was not “what’s inside the Earth that counts, but what’s inside our minds and hearts”.
Despite the efforts of Bill Clinton and his vice-president Al Gore on the Kyoto protocol, George W Bush abandoned the treaty once he took office. Barack Obama did what he could with climate negotiations in Copenhagen and Paris, and it was only in his second term that he made the deliberate decision to pursue a less stringent agreement to avoid passing a treaty through a polarised and obstructionist Congress. Trump’s action on climate change is thus not a break from the past, but a continuation of it.
At the 1992 Earth Summit, George HW Bush stated that “the American way of life is non-negotiable”: A statement that holds true today. Few Americans today realise that a serious effort to tackle climate change requires Americans to change how they live. Even supporters look to technological innovation and new industries as the mechanism to tackle carbon emissions. The political narrative supports this denial: Even arguments that support tackling climate change are wrapped in promises of ‘green jobs’ and ‘energy independence’.
What we need is an ‘eco-civilisational revolution‘ led by the developing world where the majority of people live. While it is disappointing that the US — the world’s secondlargest emitter and largest per capita emitter among industrialised countries — will not contribute, the world should not be held to ransom because the domestic political processes of five per cent of the world’s population cannot treat the problem seriously. China is now seen as the leader of the global effort to combat climate change. Beijing pledged to work with the EU to control carbon emissions, and California governor Jerry Brown, insistent on an environmental agenda despite Trump, travelled to China almost immediately after the decision.
China’s motivations may be geopolitical (an attempt to seize global leadership from the US), economic (a way to invest in renewable and ‘green’ industries of the future), or entirely sincere (in that it understands the potential impact of rampant climate change and environmental catastrophe). But there is also a cultural argument. China is a much older civilisation and culture than the US, and predates today’s consumerist, resourceintensive and materialist cultures.
And even as China embraced it to help lift people from poverty, it now seems to understand its limits. Deng Xiaoping first used the term “moderate prosperity” in 1979, connecting the idea to Confucian principles, and was echoed by later Chinese leaders. In 2013, President Xi Jinping called for “ecological civilisation reforms” to account for the environmental repercussions of China’s development. India too has expressed its support for tackling climate change after Trump’s decision. Prime Minister Narendra Modi stated that “exploitation of nature is not acceptable to us”. Modi too referred to India’s long history, when he stated that “for the last 5,000 years, even when I was not born, it has been the tradition in India to protect the environment”.
Many will dismiss this statement, given India’s current struggles with environmental protection. But there’s something to this reference to India’s culture and experience — its vegetarianism, fasting and traditions of frugality. Like China, India has a long history steeped in wisdom and knowledge that predates today’s industrial economies.
In contrast, the US has known little else but modern-style capitalism. To admit that its lifestyle may need to be managed in a resource-constrained future is to reject the ‘American Dream’, something that has guided the country for most of its history.
TO ADMIT THAT ITS LIFESTYLE MAY NEED TO BE MANAGED IN A RESOURCECONSTRAINED FUTURE IS TO REJECT THE ‘AMERICAN DREAM’, SOMETHING THAT HAS GUIDED THE COUNTRY FOR MOST OF ITS HISTORY