United States President George Bush comes to the G8 summit with posterity on his mind. He will never again have to go looking for votes or asking for campaign contributions, but he will have to listen to the American people to go down in history as a great conservative president.
That concern is likely to preclude bold concessions to British Prime Minister Tony Blair. But the conservative bedrock is showing signs of shifting. The religious right has shifted on Africa in recent years, and that has been reflected in Bush’s claim to have tripled US aid to the continent, and his pledge to double it again.
More recently, a handful of leading members of the evangelical churches have signalled concern over the pace of climate change and what it says about human ”steward-ship” of the earth. That may be reflected by small changes in Bush’s rhetoric and his bargaining position.
Global warming
Public opinion on climate change is far more laid back in the US than in Europe. While 59% of Americans believe it is already happening, according to an ABC News poll last month, only one in 10 believes that human activity is the single most important cause. Only 38% describe it as an urgent problem requiring immediate government action.
Bush’s views therefore reflect those of his public, but it is a two-way street. Public attitudes have almost certainly been influenced by the White House, particularly in the absence of a Democratic party assault on the issue.
Bush’s view on global warming has closely mirrored that of the conservative end of the oil industry, embodied by the Texan giant Exxon Mobil, which has fought a rearguard action against the scientific consensus, putting emphasis on the need for further research rather than action.
Campaign contributions play a minor role here. Exxon Mobil was not a big contributor to the re-election campaign. But the oil industry does not have to influence Bush. In professional background and philosophy he is one of them, and so is vice president Dick Cheney. They brought Texan attitudes and staff with them to the White House, and former oil lobbyists in the administration (such as the former climate change adviser Phil Cooney, now at Exxon Mobil) have been able to influence the flow of information and research to the Oval Office.
The issue of climate change is also far less visible in the US media than it is in Europe. A study in 2000 found there was three times more coverage in the British press. In principle, the US mainstream media avoids launching campaigns on its own initiative and, in the name of objectivity, has tended to give more or less equal time to scientists on both sides of the argument, even though the sceptics are a tiny minority.
James Steinberg, Bill Clinton’s former deputy national security adviser, said Bush ”doesn’t want to look like the United States is on its own”.
Steinberg added: ”At the same time it’s not going to hurt him entirely for him to say ‘I was not willing to sacrifice America’s economic growth for an unproven, untested set of proposals on climate change’.”
So for a president contemplating his place in American history, there is currently no strong pressure to take bold steps. But there are early signs of the ground shifting.
The US Senate, which unanimously rejected Kyoto, voted last month to endorse mandatory market-based measures to address global warming, for the first time.
Across the United States, 158 cities have pledged to curb emissions, and in the mid-Atlantic and north-east, nine states have established their own regional emissions-trading programme. In California, Arnold Schwarzenegger, the Republican governor, flatly contradicted the president, stating: ”The debate is over … and we know the time for action is now.”
However, Schwarzenegger’s very Californian views on the environment, like his liberal stance on abortion, is seen in the White House as the necessary price of a political foothold in the state. Independent action by mostly Democratic cities and states could lessen the pressure on the federal government to take stronger action.
Other political shifts are likely to have more of an influence. Most important of all is a trend among some Christian conservatives, like Ted Haggard, the head of the National Association of Evangelicals, to make environmental protection a religious issue.
Aid to Africa
Church influence has already brought results in the administration’s Africa policy. The promise to double aid, the HIV/Aids and malaria programmes, can be partly traced to faith-based lobbying. They provide some substance to Bush’s claim to be a compassionate conservative.
The description of US aid as ”stingy” by Jan Egeland, a UN official, sparked a rare public debate on the issue. Americans were shocked to find they came bottom of the league of industrialised countries when it came to foreign development assistance, and there is strong popular support for increasing aid expenditure.
Bush’s claim to have tripled aid to Africa and his promise to double that amount again is a response to that upsurge in sentiment, although his critics have questioned how well-founded those figures are. Susan Rice, President Clinton’s former adviser on Africa, alleged that the real increase in African aid since 2000 had been less than 80%.
Trade
This may be the area in which Bush is least prepared to give ground. Princeton Lyman, an analyst at the Council on Foreign Relations pointed out that the administration spends $3,9-billion a year on subsidising US cotton farmers — more than it spends on African aid.
Cutting off such huge subsidies to agro-industry would strike a serious blow to congressional Republicans now fundraising for the 2006 mid-term elections. The president has enough troubles in Congress already without sparking a revolt. The problems the administration is having pushing through the Central American Free Trade Agreement demonstrate the strength of protectionist sentiment on both sides of the aisle. – Guardian Unlimited Â