U.S. leadership key to cooperation that solves climate

Global climate change is the final component of the environmental commons and the one with the greatest potential geopolitical impact. Scientists and policy makers alike have projected catastrophic consequences for [hu]mankind and the planet if the world average temperature rises by more than two degrees over the next century. Plant and animal species could grow extinct at a rapid pace, large-scale ecosystems could collapse, human migration could increase to untenable levels, and global economic development could be categorically reversed. Changes in geography, forced migration, and global economic contraction layered on top of the perennial regional security challenges could create a geopolitical reality of unmanageable complexity and conflict, especially in the densely populated and politically unstable areas of Asia such as the Northeast and South. Furthermore, any legitimate action inhibiting global climate change will require unprecedented levels of self-sacrifice and international cooperation. The United States does consider climate change a serious concern, but its lack of both long-term strategy and political commitment, evidenced in its refusal to ratify the Kyoto Protocol of 1997 and the repeated defeat of climate-change legislation in Congress, deters other countries from participating in a global agreement. The United States is the second-largest global emitter of carbon dioxide, after China, with 20% of the world’s share. The United States is the number one per capita emitter of carbon dioxide and the global leader in per capita energy demand. Therefore, US leadership is essential in not only getting other countries to cooperate, but also in actually inhibiting climate change. Others around the world, including the European Union and Brazil, have attempted their own domestic reforms on carbon emissions and energy use, and committed themselves to pursuing renewable energy. Even China has made reducing emissions a goal, a fact it refuses to let the United States ignore. But none of those nations currently has the ability to lead a global initiative. President Obama committed the United States to energy and carbon reform at the Copenhagen Summit in 2009, but the increasingly polarized domestic political environment and the truculent American economic recovery are unlikely to inspire progress on costly energy issues. China is also critically important to any discussion of the management of climate change as it produces 21% of the world’s total carbon emissions, a percentage that will only increase as China develops the western regions of its territory and as its citizens experience a growth in their standard of living. China, however, has refused to take on a leadership role in climate change, as it has also done in the maritime, space, and cyberspace domains. China uses its designation as a developing country to shield itself from the demands of global stewardship. China’s tough stance at the 2009 Copenhagen Summit underscores the potential dangers of an American decline: no other country has the capacity and the desire to accept global stewardship over the environmental commons. Only a vigorous United States could lead on climate change, given Russia’s dependence on carbon-based energies for economic growth, India’s relatively low emissions rate, and China’s current reluctance to assume global responsibility. The protection and good faith management of the global commons—sea, space, cyberspace, nuclear proliferation, water security, the Arctic, and the environment itself—are imperative to the long-term growth of the global economy and the continuation of basic geopolitical stability. But in almost every case, the potential absence of constructive and influential US leadership would fatally undermine the essential communality of the global commons.