Arctic keeps melting while nations quibble

By Joel Brinkley

WASHINGTON — Jim Rogers looked a bit uncomfortable sitting on a stage in Brussels, Belgium, amid a small gaggle of climate-change activists.

Rogers is chairman of Duke Energy, a utility that provides power to customers in five southern and midwestern states. And by Rogers’ own admission, “of all the companies in the United States, we are the third-largest emitter of CO2” — adding with a chuckle, “I say that not to brag.”

The German Marshall Fund of the United States invited Rogers to represent his industry before a gathering of European leaders at its Brussels Forum earlier this month because he has positioned himself as the born-again carbon emitter — the darling of many environmentalists. Carbon-dioxide emissions are a major contributor to global warming.

“I have come to a place where I listen to the scientists,” Rogers explained. “It took us 100 years to get here; it is going to take us many decades to move forward. We have to act now.” To that, the panel moderator, Katrin Mueller-Walde, a German television reporter, fairly gushed as she asked why “more of your CEO colleagues” weren’t following his example.

I have to ask the same question because it seems awfully easy to sit on a stage and call for action while actually doing little. To some that may seem an unfair characterization. But if you want to know what a company is really thinking, listen to what it says to Wall Street stock analysts — the people who decide whether Duke’s stock is a “buy” or a “sell” — not what the CEO says on stage.

An epiphany

During an analysts’ meeting last fall, Rogers said nothing about climate-change activism. But Keith Trent, Duke’s chief strategy officer, seemed to explain Rogers’ epiphany.

“On mandatory carbon legislation,” he said “we believe it is no longer a question of if, but when. And in our crystal ball, we see federal legislation coming after the presidential election.

“But,” he added, “I can assure that we are at the table today, making sure that the ‘right’ legislation is enacted.”

The laws, he insisted, should not “unfairly burden regions of the country that have depended historically on coal.” Almost three-quarters of Duke’s power is produced by burning coal.

So Duke is talking the talk — while preparing to fight efforts that might force it to walk the walk. The same can be said for much of the world.

Europe is anxiously awaiting the next American president who, it is presumed, will take climate-change seriously and come to the next United Nations Climate Change Conference, in Copenhagen in December 2009, prepared to make a deal. Meantime, Europe is boasting that it is so far ahead of America that perhaps Washington can learn from its example.

As Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the prime minster of Denmark, put it: “We have decided to show the good examples, so to speak, by setting very ambitious targets for the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions and the development of renewable energy.” Last year, Europe committed to cut carbon-dioxide emissions 20 percent by 2020. But then earlier this month, the EU agreed to exempt heavy industry in Germany from meeting those goals — if similar industries in the United States, China and India, say, are not bound by similar targets. Otherwise, the Germany companies successfully argued, they would be at a significant disadvantage. Now that Germany has won its exemption, no doubt some other European countries will request similar protections.

In the United States, no matter who is elected president, it seems unlikely that a working consensus between government and industry on a strong carbon-emissions reduction plan can be reached in time for the U.N. conference, which opens 11 months after the new president takes office. After all, the government’s position right now is unyielding.

“Without China, if you don’t get China in, you can count the United States out,” said C. Boyden Gray, the U.S. representative to the European Union. He said he was quoting Sen. John Kerry, the Massachusetts Democrat, indicating the bipartisan nature of that sentiment.

Melting Arctic

China is not saying what it will do next year. But China, India and other developing states have long argued that the West developed its economies over the last century with few environmental restraints. Today, why should developing countries take on the heavy yoke of carbon-emission reductions after their competitors in the West have already built robust industrial infrastructures? So, around the world carbon-emitting nations are declaring that they won’t do anything until their neighbors do. Meantime, politicians fulminate, business leaders equivocate. And the Arctic continues to melt.

X Joel Brinkley is a former Pulitzer Prize-winning foreign correspondent for The New York Times and now a professor of journalism at Stanford University. McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.