Et tu China

The reason that George Bush gave for not participating in the 1997 Kyoto agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions: was that the agreement did not include developing nations. Primarily nations like India and China.

The American president is right in some respects; India and China are highly polluted and they do not have effective laws to protect the environment. However, there is a fallacy in Mr Bush’s argument- a commonly employed one in politics. It is the you-too fallacy. This fallacy is points a finger at another party in order to draw attention from the speaker’s flaws. By saying, if China can do it so can I, Mr Bush is making a comparison which is unequal and irrelevant to the argument, as to whether the US should participate in the Kyoto agreement.

Why?
Firstly, to compare the US to a developing country is unfair comparison. There were no laws curbing emissions when the US was in the first stages of its development and now it seems unfair to curb China and India’s growth. Secondly, the despite being a developed country, the US is the largest emitter of greenhouse gases. Although China is the second largest emitter, it still is an unfair comparison. Because the US as a country is an entity on its own; the gases they emit do not exist in relevance to the China’s emissions.

I heard somewhere that a good king is a benevolent king, and I am not comparing the US to a king- but it is most powerful nation in the world. And if it did exercise benevolence once in a while instead of constantly being churlish, perhaps other countries like India and China would follow suit.