Word: kyoto
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...nothing if not adaptive, and its champions have responded to global warming with a market-based solution that provides polluters with a profit incentive to mend their ways. It's called cap and trade, and it is the mechanism behind the so-called carbon markets spawned by the Kyoto Protocol. Firms in developed countries that pump out more CO2 than they are allowed under limits imposed by Kyoto are required by the protocol to offset that pollution by buying credits on the carbon market. Those that cut CO2 emissions below their allowance or help polluters in developing nations clean...
Since January 2005, carbon markets in the European Union have traded at least 500 million tons of CO2. Because the Bush Administration dropped out of Kyoto, the U.S. doesn't participate in this booming global trade. But state governments are starting to set up regional carbon markets based on caps they establish under their own authority. In December, seven Northeastern states led by New York agreed to cut power-plant emissions via cap and trade, beginning...
...February 2005, when the Kyoto Protocol took effect in 141 countries but not the U.S., Nickels launched the U.S. Mayors' Climate Protection Agreement. So far, 218 mayors in 39 states, representing nearly 44 million Americans, have signed on to its 12-step program for their own cities to meet or beat Kyoto's original target for the U.S.--cutting greenhouse-gas emissions to 7% below 1990 levels over the next six years. Some cities got a head start. Portland, Ore., which zeroed in on global warming beginning in 1993, has already slashed emissions by 13% per capita, partly by building...
...though mayors prefer to downplay the costs of fighting global warming, there seems to be truth to the Bush Administration's contention that meeting the Kyoto targets involves pain--not just gain. And in Seattle, where population growth is projected to push up regional greenhouse gases by 38% in the next 15 years, ratcheting down to 1990 levels would require slashing emissions by 683,000 tons--the equivalent of taking some 148,000 cars off the road. To do that may require such unpopular measures as highway tolls and increased parking taxes. But in the absence of federal controls, Nickels...
...Kyoto accord on climate change did nothing to slow growth in China and India because as developing countries they are not required under the protocol to make cuts in carbon emissions--and that is not likely to change after the agreement expires in 2012. Both countries are desperate for energy to fuel the economic expansion that is pulling their citizens out of poverty, and despite bold investments in renewables, much of that energy will have to come from coal, the only traditional energy source they have in abundance. Barbara Finamore, director of the Natural Resources Defense Council's China Clean...