Word: kyoto
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Oslo to collect their Nobel Prize for their efforts to build awareness of, and combat climate change. Though they will collect a prize worth well over a million US dollars, we could imagine no better present that the United States government could give them than the ratification of the Kyoto Protocol, the decade-old international treaty designed to limit emissions and pollution that cause global warming. Ironically, the United States has already signed the Kyoto Protocol (under the Clinton administration) but foregone the minor detail of actually ratifying it. The United States’ failure to ratify the Protocol...
...with the Kyoto set to go into effect in 2008, this year's talks in Bali will be the most important international environmental negotiations in over a decade. The Kyoto Protocol - which requires developed nations who have ratified the deal to cut their greenhouse gas emissions by an average of about 5% below 1990 levels by 2012 - expires in just five years. Given how long international treaties take to be developed and ratified, the world needs to begin immediately at Bali the process of preparing a successor to Kyoto to be ready by the end of 2012 - otherwise...
...climate change conference. The summit has been held nearly every year since 1992, when the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC) - the document that has since guided international work on global warming - was hammered out. It was at the 1997 conference, held in Japan, that the Kyoto Protocol was passed, but since then, there's been little progress, thanks in no small part to President George W. Bush's determined foot dragging on climate change...
...that the White House is seemingly the only place green hasn't gone mainstream. Just last week, 150 top global corporations - including General Electric, Johnson & Johnson and Shell - endorsed a petition calling for mandatory cuts in greenhouse gas emissions, a business position unthinkable just a year ago. Australia - a Kyoto holdout, like the U.S. - just elected a new Prime Minister with a strong environmental record who says he'll ratify the Protocol. States and cities in the U.S. have taken their own steps on climate change in the absence of action from the White House, and Congress is finally ready...
...major dispute could trip up progress at Bali, however. Under Kyoto, only developed countries were required to make mandatory cuts in their carbon emissions; developing nations like China and India had no such demands. The U.S. has long maintained that it won't sign onto a new deal unless the developing countries are included in a more substantive way - a position unlikely to change even when the occupant of the White House does. Beijing and New Delhi both argue that the vast majority of historical carbon emissions came from the developed nations (CO2 stays...