Word: kyoto
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Regardless of who wins the presidential litigation tournament in Florida, our planet is in deep, deep trouble. Because as the current negotiations over the Kyoto climate change treaty show, neither candidate is about to risk the ire of the electorate by committing to the tough choices necessary to curb global warming...
...World leaders have accepted the principle that urgent action is needed to drastically cut back on carbon gas emissions if we are to even begin to address the problem. That's why they negotiated the Kyoto Protocol on climate change two years ago, requiring that the industrialized nations over the next decade reduce their output of carbon gases to 5 percent below the 1990 level. The U.S. is slated for a 7 percent reduction, on the basis that it is the greatest culprit, producing some 25 percent of all greenhouse gases despite housing only 4 percent of the world...
Europe can't see the wood for the trees, says the U.S. But the Europeans believe that what they're seeing is actually a giant fig leaf. Make-or-break talks in The Hague on the Kyoto climate change treaty appeared doomed for failure, Tuesday, after the European Union rejected a U.S. proposal to factor in its forests as a means of cutting its output of the carbon gases that create global warming...
...Kyoto Protocol, endorsed by the Clinton administration, requires that by 2012, the industrialized nations will have cut their carbon gas emissions to 5 percent below their 1990 levels - the U.S., which accounts for at least one quarter of "greenhouse gas" emissions despite comprising only 4 percent of the world population, is slated for a 7 percent cut from 1990 levels. Reducing emissions, of course, is a painful process for industrialized nations, because it requires cutting back on coal-burning power stations and on the consumption of gasoline and other oil-based fuels. To understand the magnitude of that pain...
...while the Republican presidential nominee is openly hostile to Kyoto, it remains unlikely that Vice President Gore - who led the U.S. team to the negotiations that produced the protocol - would win the requisite 67 Senate votes to ratify the treaty. After all, the treaty requires that in the next decade, the industrialized nations cut their carbon gas outputs to a level 5 percent below the 1990 figures. And for a booming U.S. economy whose output levels continue to increase every year, that would mean an economically burdensome 20-30 percent reduction in coal-fired electricity, gasoline consumption and other burning...