Word: kyoto
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...changes that are needed: the U.S., Germany or Japan? Developing countries, including giant China, where energy consumption has been a fraction of that in industrialized countries, say they have the right to use more energy now. Even the U.S. Senate is reluctant, for some elusive reason, to ratify the Kyoto Protocol, which calls for a reduction in greenhouse emissions. By the time everyone has recognized the true seriousness of global warming, it will be too late to take action. KAY TOMORI Tokyo...
Such a calamity could be self-inflicted. Many scientists believe that the current warming is related to the increased burning of fossil fuels, such as gasoline and coal, which overloads the atmosphere with carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. That's why 160 countries signed the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which requires industrial nations to reduce their greenhouse emissions to an average of 5.2% below 1990 levels between the years 2008 and 2012. But even that weak treaty remains controversial, and governments have made little progress toward implementing the pact. The U.S. Senate hasn't even considered ratifying it. Opponents seize...
Protecting civilization is the goal of the Kyoto Protocol, but the treaty allows 12 more years for implementation, on the assumption that climate change will be gradual. That assumption looks shaky. Studies of deep underground ice layers in Greenland, which reveal a record of climate changes over hundreds of thousands of years, show that major climate shifts, like the onset of the Younger Dryas, can come very abruptly--within a few decades...
...moral responsibility to get off that field, move to Washington, and campaign without pause for the less-than-sunny personality of Al Gore '69. Republican or Democrat, libertarian or Independent: it doesn't matter. Only Gore can convince those reactionary corporate pawns in the Senate to ratify the prudent Kyoto Protocol. Only Gore has written a book--a whole book!--on the subject, refreshingly entitled Earth in the Balance. Only Gore, therefore, can save civilization from the preeminent crisis now facing it, climactic Armageddon precipitated by human-driven global warming...
...must ensure also that this global challenge is met with a global solution, for the heat-trapping gases warming the earth pose the same risk whether they come from the U.S. or from China. An agreement forged in 1997 in Kyoto, Japan, with critical leadership from Vice President Gore, calls for strong action by industrialized nations. But developing countries must join...