Body scanners and the climate crusaders

We look at media comment on Schiphol Airport’s decision to use body scanners, the Copenhagen accord, as well as comment on president Nicolas Sarkozy’s failed attempt to be a champion climate crusader.

The fear of flying

The Financial Times is critical of Schiphol Airport’s decision to use body scanners. Airport security since 2001 has been good, and it would make more sense to invest in better intelligence, writes the newspaper.

… The fact that the Christmas day plot and the 2001 “shoe bomber” involved hard-to-detonate explosives shows the success in keeping more obvious weapons off aircraft. The marginal benefit of extra security may therefore be limited. ...

So Schiphol airport’s decision to put US-bound passengers through body scannerssmacks of a need to be seen to be doing something. That is the wrong approach. New broad-based checks must be justified by documenting that the effect outweighs the burdens they impose. Every year 2.2bn people fly: adding an hour to their wait would cost tens of billions of dollars — resources that could be used in other ways. Improving intelligence is one. Agencies that missed warnings about the plot are as much at fault as Schiphol security.

Smaller is better

The Copenhagen accord may not be the disaster it at first appears, writes The Economist. One reason is that it has encouraged the development of political structures better suited to dealing with climate change.

… Climate change is not just an unusually grand problem. It is also an unusually complex one. ... Trying to deal with all the sources of the many gases involved in a single set of negotiations, in a forum of 193 countries, was always a tall order.

The Copenhagen accord edges towards allowing negotiations to take place in new forums. Some of its provisions, notably on mechanisms for funding mitigation efforts in developing countries, can take effect outside the UN process. That could mark a new pluralism in climate politics, allowing coalitions of the willing to form for specific purposes — such as slowing deforestation, or stemming emissions from shipping. ...

The not so holy crusades

Last week, France's Constitutional Council blocked a new tax on carbon emissions that was meant to take effect on January 1. While this is a blow to President Nicolas Sarkozy's efforts to be a champion climate crusader, it is good news for environmentalists, writes The Wall Street Journal.

... When Mr. Sarkozy announced the tax in September, he promised that "The aim of ecological fiscal policy is not to fill state coffers but to incite French people and companies to change their behavior." But the details of the policy spoke otherwise, most notably by fully exempting oil refineries, power stations, cement works and other major producers of carbon, and partially exempting politically connected constituencies such as farmers and fishermen. …