Word: kyoto
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...came down to a single percentage point. For more than a week, negotiators at the Kyoto climate-change conference had been haggling over the terms of a treaty that might at last begin to do something concrete about the looming worldwide threat of global warming. Delegates had cajoled and harangued and reasoned with one another, trying to decide who would have to cut back, and how much, on pollutants that are heating the globe. By last Tuesday night, after a whirlwind 14-hour visit to Kyoto by Al Gore, the U.S.'s most prominent environmentalist, they were almost there...
...issue is very much on the agenda this week as representatives of more than 150 nations gathered in Kyoto, Japan, wrangle over how to cut emissions of man-made carbon dioxide, a culprit in the ominous warming of the global climate. In the U.S., the vehicle population has grown six times as fast as the human population, reaching 176 million cars and trucks. American autos are 90% cleaner than they were three decades ago, but they still account for over a third of urban-area ozone. More than 125 million Americans breathe unhealthy air, and an estimated...
...fuels are moving from experimental curiosity to commercial reality, economically turning sunlight, wind and other renewable resources into useful forms of energy. Although the new devices provide less than 1% of the world's energy, they are advancing rapidly. If the negotiators wrapping up their 10-day meeting in Kyoto this week are looking for an engineering solution to the problems of global warming and climate change, these technologies could provide the blueprint...
...quickly the world's energy systems are transformed will depend in part on whether fossil-fuel prices remain low and the entrenched opposition of many oil and electric-power companies can be overcome. The pace of change will be heavily influenced by the climate agreement that emerges in Kyoto and the national policies that follow. In the 1980s, California provided tax incentives and access to the power grid for new energy sources, which enabled the state to dominate renewable-energy markets worldwide. Similar incentives and access have been offered by European countries in the 1990s. Sometimes such measures are needed...
...negotiators flying home from Kyoto this week with a climate-change agreement that may be less than they had hoped for, the coming generation of new energy technologies offers a ray of hope. In order to wean ourselves from the fossil fuels that are choking the planet, we need reliable alternatives. If anything can be done to accelerate the new technologies, we may all breathe a little easier...