EDITORIAL: Tough climate

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Much as the environmental left considers this week's Group of Eight (G8) carbon-cutting agreement to be insufficient, the fact is that the "belch-tightening" President Bush just agreed to would be a truly staggering task if taken seriously. The G8 nations of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States have just pledged to halve their carbon output by 2050. The true scale of such an agreement - were it ever enacted - would make the Manhattan Project, the Hoover Dam and other feats of state all combined look miniscule by comparison. It is little wonder that ordinary Americans continue to be skeptical of the likely expenditure required to combat the uncertain threat of global warming.

What would it cost to cut carbon emissions in half? Nobody knows for certain, but last year's much-discussed Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change contended that one percent of global gross domestic product per annum would be required, starting today, to avoid the most devastating climate-change scenarios. Last month, the good Professor Stern upped the ante to 2 percent. We live in a world economy of approximately $65 trillion. So, to meet the Stern expectations, the world would need to come up with an annual fund equivalent to more than double the yearly budget of the entire U.S. military, or around half-a-trillion dollars. Let us assume that the costs of this week's agreement would be more modest - perhaps "only" a Pentagon and a half. It would be levied in the form of government-mandated carbon "scarcity," manifesting itself as carbon-trading permits, carbon taxes and the like.

What about the rising carbon juggernauts of China and India? These two non-G8 nations continue to scoff at the idea of forgoing a decile of economic growth to further what they view as a pet issue of wealthy nations whose rank hypocrisy knows no bounds. Their carbon emissions continue to grow by leaps and bounds.

For reasons any observer of previous rounds of climate-change diplomacy could predict, all top-down carbon agreements founder on the rocks of practicality and self-interest. They are devised by elites who presume to foist them on the lesser breed back home. The Kyoto Protocol failed for this reason. The European Union is well on its way to failing to meet its 2020 carbon goals. We'd call it reality meeting its near-opposite.

Climate hawks like Rep. Ed Markey, Massachusetts Democrat, who favors an 85 percent reduction by mid-century, might call this foolhardiness or myopia. We'd call it a healthy check on what would certainly be the largest economic re-engineering in the history of mankind.