Just a few short days ago President Obama publicly announced Jon Huntsman Jr. as his nomination for the highly coveted ambassadorship to China. So far, Huntsman’s nomination has been garnering rave reviews, with Obama being lauded with praise for being able to reach across the Republican-Democrat political divide in order to create the most effective cabinet. Although Huntsman has been approved unanimously twice before in front of the Senate for high powered international positions; once as the US ambassador to Singapore in 1992 and again as a deputy US trade representative for Asian affairs in 2001, strains with his own Republican party and potential conflicts of interest could stall his nomination.
One of the biggest bullet points on Huntsman and Obama’s China agenda is to create a coalition of cooperation in order to deal with the issues of global warming, pollution and creating clean water and air and it is not hard to see why.
The US is one of the largest greenhouse gas producing countries and followed closely by China. The emissions of the two countries are growing year on year, resulting in the recent EPA designation that greenhouse gases are pollution. The EPA believes that with more intense greenhouse gases, opportunities for health problems would also increase; such as diseases like malaria, more powerful storms and flooding and greater heat waves.
However this is where the irony begins as Huntsman is an heir, and once an executive, to one of the biggest air polluting companies in America. Huntsman Corporation, which is one of the world’s largest chemical companies, is a large manufacturer of Methyl tert-butyl ether or MTBE, a chemical used in the blending of gasoline, which has been proven to pollute large quantities of groundwater when spilled at gas stations.
Huntsman Chemicals has been involved with several pollution related lawsuits or investigations: one in 1998 with the EPA after failing to disclose that they were releasing volatile organic compounds that can destroy the ozone from their plant, another in 2003 for multiple violations of the Texas Clean Air Act and again in 2006 after two men in Pennsylvania were diagnosed with brain cancer due to their air and groundwater being contaminated with hazardous chemicals. In addition to all this, in 2006 Huntsman Corporation completed a massive joint venture project with China and opened nine different offices, all in major eastern and southern coastal cities.
How will this knowledge affect Huntsman’s nomination? Will his experience dealing with a major corporate polluter and their efforts to remedy their problem be seen as a boon or will his family’s business bring doubts to his credibility? Even if it is decided it has no negative effect on his nomination, it could become a double edged sword as his past and family’s business could become a recurring theme throughout his tenure as the number one American diplomat in Beijing.
China itself is going through some rather tumultuous pollution and environmental protection problems. Its pollution issue has become so large that it’s now at the forefront of many of its political dealings; moreover it’s being blamed for the reason why cancer has now become China’s leading cause of death. With the European Union deeming that only 1% of China’s city denizens are breathing clean air and Forbes magazine estimating that 10 out of 10 of the world’s most polluted cities are all in China, it cannot afford to continue the status quo.
With the whole world looking at the two biggest polluters, one being the sole superpower and the other a potential superpower, a question that needs to be asked is if America can even tolerate the potential argument that can be made against Jon Huntsman. How can America try and convince local and international companies in China to forgo their polluting when their own ambassador once lead and will one day inherit one of its own companies that has time and time again shown disregard for the environment?
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