Word: kyoto
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Remember the "indispensable nation"? That was Madeleine Albright's catchphrase for the U.S. role in international affairs. Yet Monday's decision by the nations of the industrialized and developing world to adopt the Kyoto Accord - despite its rejection by Washington - may be a sign that the Home of the Brave is in danger of growing dispensable...
...course, the revised Kyoto Accord hammered out in three days of intense negotiations in Bonn is but a shadow of its former self. It has reduced the average cut in greenhouse gas emissions required by the year 2012 from 5.2 percent below 1990 levels to 1.8 percent below 1990 levels, and has incorporated a number of the negotiating positions previously advanced by the Clinton administration, such as crediting nations for maintaining large forests to serve as "carbon sinks" to soak up the offending gas. (And all this in response not to pressure from Washington, which had removed itself from...
...Still, the Bonn agreement has been celebrated as a historic breakthrough both by the governments of Western Europe and environmentalist activist groups such as Greenpeace, which believes even the watered-down Kyoto creates the foundations of a vigorous international system to regulate human behaviors harmful to the planet. And even though the world's largest polluter has stayed out, the treaty's signatories collectively produce more than twice as much greenhouse...
...real significance of the revised Kyoto Accord lies less in its impact on the planet's climate than in the fact that it survived Washington's withdrawal. The determination of the nations of the industrialized world to hang in and negotiate a binding treaty even after it had been nixed by the "indispensable nation" suggests that we may have entered a new era in international affairs. And that it will be an era in which the U.S. will no longer be automatically granted the leadership role among Western nations it established during the Cold...
...Culturally sensitized, our group sets off on our trek from Mitake in the Kiso River Valley, two hours' drive east of Kyoto. The advent of railways made backwaters of many towns along the old Nakasendo path and, in a happy turn for visitors, isolated the ancient wooden settlements from modern encroachment. Mitake's suburbanites may have forgotten the road, but the signs are still there. Lurid azaleas and miniature topiary pines trace its zigzag route past new housefronts and tiny gardens. (The kinks and bends were originally designed to slow down cavalry attacks.) By the roadside are vegetable plots...