Word: kyoto
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...reduce its carbon emissions to 10% below 1990 levels by the year 2010. To reach that goal, the company let each of its units trade the right to emit specified amounts of carbon (a system similar to one that may be set up among nations under the Kyoto Protocol). This has allowed managers to use their internal market incentives to cut carbon emissions as deeply and efficiently as possible. Result: BP hit its target this year--seven years ahead of schedule--at no net cost to the company...
CARBON CREDIT OFFSETS Under the Kyoto treaty to combat global warming, Western Europe and Japan must reduce carbon emissions below 1990 levels. (The U.S. has refused to ratify the treaty.) One way to reach the target involves paying poorer countries to keep their land under forests, which absorb carbon from the atmosphere. For example, Japan could pay Peru not to log rain forest. The amount of carbon absorbed by those trees would then be counted as a credit on Japan's carbon-emission balance sheet. "This would reverse a trend in human history," says Irvin. "Suddenly land is more valuable...
...productivity, the President's goal is to accelerate that trend an additional 30%--the equivalent of taking 70 million cars off the road or avoiding roughly 500 million metric tons of greenhouse gases. In fact, meeting the President's goal will require emissions reductions comparable with what the Kyoto Protocol parties hope to attain--but without the devastating economic consequences of the Kyoto approach...
...avoid disaster while putting an Israeli-Palestinian agreement on the back burner in order to invade Iraq. Even more serious than differences over the Middle East is growing European and global frustration with what is seen as a new American unilateralism. U.S. actions such as rejection of the Kyoto treaty on global warming, declaration of a "first-strike" policy that might include an attack on Iraq and withdrawal from the agreement to create an International Criminal Court have convinced many Europeans that the U.S. no longer feels any need to consult its friends, or indeed any need for friends...
Because European leaders are still feeling burned by the Bush Administration's rejection of multilateral initiatives like the Kyoto accords on global warming, treaties on biological and chemical weapons and the International Criminal Court. They want to register their objections to "regime change" in Iraq early, before an American military campaign becomes a fait accompli. "Much of the solidarity expressed for the U.S. after Sept. 11 has been whittled away," says one E.U. diplomat. "The standing of the Bush Administration is quite low in Europe, and many Europeans feel that a military attack on Iraq is yet another expression...