Word: protocolic
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Thanks to backroom deal-making between the European Union and the Russian Federation—and despite persistent U.S. intransigence—the Kyoto Protocol on Global Climate Change finally came into force this February. Many believe that the resuscitation of the Kyoto deal is a momentous as well as joyful turning point in global climate policy...
Despite popular misrepresentation to the contrary, full implementation of the Kyoto Protocol was never anticipated to be sufficient to prevent potentially harmful disruption of Earth’s climate. Rather it is the first step along this path. With every passing day the challenge of meeting the objective of the Protocol is made more difficult but certainly not impossible. Consider the impressive list of major corporations, starting with British Petroleum, and more recently Shell and others, and the hundreds of cities that are demonstrating what many analyses have indicated, namely, that the Kyoto targets can be met without incurring serious...
Negotiated in 1997, the Kyoto Protocol had sought to halt the growth of carbon emissions in the industrialized nations. The Protocol’s original goal was to reduce, by the year 2010, the total emissions of these industrialized countries by a total of around 5 percent below their 1990 emissions. Any reduction in global emissions is, of course, commendable. However, it was always clear that even if implemented fully, the Kyoto targets would make the most minor of dents in this most major of problems. With the world’s largest carbon emitter, the United States, still steadfast...
...coming into force of Kyoto is, however, not entirely without significance. The public failure of the treaty would have stymied future global policy initiatives and deeply disheartened those who seek more profound global action to combat climatic change. Importantly, the Protocol does make an important political statement by insisting that no one country, no matter how powerful, should be allowed to veto the global public interest...
First, the U.S. has very successfully evangelized the argument that the Kyoto Protocol is somehow inequitable because major developing countries were not required to make emission reductions. The argument was originally advanced by the U.S. government as a diversionary justification for its own policy reticence. However, it is now routinely propagated by U.S. nongovernmental organizations as well as U.S. academia. The attacks have particularly focused on China and India. Both countries are easy targets because they have over a billion people each, and just about anything when multiplied by a billion becomes a very large number. The fact...