While the G8 summit was under way, and once the news of Wednesday’s London bombings became known, the American president George Bush was widely quoted on the subject of international terrorism. He spoke of his resolve to bring the perpetrators to justice, and to “spread an ideology of hope and compassion that will overwhelm” what he called “their ideology of hate”.
But as the G8 meeting drew to a close, the US President had rather less to say about the Plan of Action, announced by the world leaders, to tackle what they deemed the “serious and long-term challenge” of climate change.
Stephen Evans, who’s on a driving tour of the western United States, says many Americans remain unconvinced that this is an issue they need to take seriously: “I’ve just driven down from Salt Lake City, through the desert of Utah and Nevada. It is a magnificent sublime wilderness where horizons are wide when they’re not broken by the craggy splendour of an ancient volcanic landscape. As the sun sinks here, the rocks glow red and it’s hard to imagine a threat to the environment where space seems limitless. And yet, many of these escarpments hide sites where humans dispose of all sorts of waste. Just beyond the beauty is a land being violated. This is where America throws its trash over the back wall.”
In Europe, insurance premiums rise as homes get built on flood plains in a search for every inch of exploitable space. In America, there is not this connection between wallets and weather. Extremes of climate seem natural.
Only on the crowded coasts is the environment an issue. California and New York have tough regulations. In between, they often can’t see what the fuss is about. It’s a big country they feel. The taxi-driver in Texas who told me that global warming was hokum is not a lone voice, some of the big oil companies that lobby Mr. Bush are also loathe to concede a link between their product and climate change.
The environment sometimes seems like the fashionable issue of the moment, the right badge to wear, the current political designer label.
Things are changing though. Neo-conservatives are worried that importing oil means relying on hostile regimes, which, moreover, might funnel some of the dollars to anti-American causes— what the neocons call a “terrorism tax on the American people.”
So there is pressure on Mr. Bush over the environment but not as a grand cause. It’s a concern rather about importing an expensive fuel from hostile places. And Mr. Bush may respond with tax incentives for cleaner technology that the US market seems increasingly to want.