Word: kyoto
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Last spring the United Nations repeatedly clashed with President George W. Bush’s policies on the Kyoto climate change treaty, missile defense and the International Criminal Court. These tensions came to a head on May 3, 2001, when the United States lost its seat on the U.N. Human Rights Commission following a secret vote. There had been four candidates for the three regional slots in the Western European and Others Group; Sweden, Austria and France were elected, while America was dropped for the first time since the commission was established in 1947. The U.N. quickly sought to justify...
First, George W. Bush twitted Europeans' environmental correctness by deciding to let the United States sit out the Kyoto treaty on global warming. Then he offended their sophisticated moral sensibilities with his plainspoken bluster about "the axis of evil." But last week, U.S. unilateralism struck an especially sensitive part of Europeans' anatomy: their pocket books. In a decision that seems directly to contradict the free-market gospel that is America's chief political export, Bush imposed protectionist tariffs of 8% to 30% on foreign steel...
...blizzard of Bush words and deeds that strike many Europeans as tone-deaf or worse: lumping North Korea, Iran and Iraq in a (speechwriter-coined) "axis of evil"; the disdain for the Geneva Conventions shown in the early treatment of prisoners at Camp X-Ray; his repudiation of the Kyoto climate accords in favor of voluntary compliance by U.S. industry; a refusal to lean on Israel, or even to engage deeply in the peace process, for six months as violence has soared; and his decision last week to set tariffs on steel imports, which violate trade rules, to score domestic...
...trade. America’s hypocrisy in raising tariffs destroys its credibility; the Bush administration appears to think the rules apply only to others, not to the United States. Bush’s unilateralist streak has been well documented in the international press—his withdrawal from the Kyoto protocol, his position on missile defense and this latest violation of international collective agreement will only reinforce the world’s perception of American arrogance and further weaken America’s influence in the global community...
...weeks ago, the White House unveiled a new policy on global warming that rejects many of the fundamental principles of the Kyoto treaty and emphasizes self-regulation by business. It also, importantly, waives pollution controls during economic slowdowns. Now Bush wants to change the way government has funded environmental cleanups since the Reagan era. And his proposed changes may prove to be something of an amnesty for many corporations penalized under the Superfund sites...