Word: kyoto
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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When delegates from 161 nations hammered out an agreement in December 1997 to save the planet from global warming, they picked an appropriate venue: Kyoto, the well-preserved cultural capital of ultra-industrialized Japan, a city where high-rises aren't allowed to ruin vistas of venerable temples in maple groves. The toughly negotiated pact became known as the Kyoto Protocol, although it's actually a treaty: 141 countries have ratified it, legally binding themselves to reduce their emissions of six greenhouse gases by 2012. From the start, there were doubts about the effectiveness of the plan. Developing countries that...
...Zoellick. "We're going to be more effective in dealing with these combined challenges on energy, the environment, [and] climate change," he said, "if we do so in a way that takes account of mutual interests and incentives." Zoellick emphasized that the partnership isn't a substitute for the Kyoto pact but should be seen as a "complement...
...Environmentalists see less complement than insult?and some fear that this rival plan may deliver a fatal blow to the Kyoto Protocol. "The new pact will attempt to lure in other nations from the Asia-Pacific region and expand its influence," says Choi Seung Kook, deputy chief of the Green Korea environmental group, "until it is big enough to ignore the Kyoto treaty." Environmentalists point out that the agreement announced in Vientiane spells out no concrete goals to reduce global warming, sets no emissions targets for countries, and can't even be called a pact?the six countries merely endorsed...
...Australians have been particularly aggressive in making the case for a Kyoto alternative. In a press conference last week, Prime Minister John Howard called the treaty "a failure." Ian Campbell, Minister for the Environment, hammered away at the fact that the protocol hasn't got universal support, relies too much on restrictions, and inhibits "absolutely vital" economic development. Another theme is that the world needs a plan that extends beyond 2012, when emissions limits set in Kyoto end. Even the 2012 goals are in jeopardy. "I don't think Europe can achieve its goals. I don't think Japan...
...Environmental groups defend Kyoto and see nothing but backpedaling in the new arrangement?if not something worse, like a protection of coal industries in Australia, the U.S., China and India. Paul Epstein, associate director of the Center for Health and the Global Environment at Harvard Medical School, says he sees a single advantage to the new approach: that the Bush Administration is finally acknowledging that global warming is real and that fossil fuels play a role. "But this dual pact approach is not helpful," he says. "The entire world community needs to come together on this issue. The pattern...