BIKE: Kyoto Protocol

[dick ryan]

Looks like us bike riders will have to keep breathing foul air - 
because of the US.
Dick Ryan

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/03/international/europe/03KYOT.html?th

The treaty, completed in Kyoto, Japan, in 1997 after two years of 
intense diplomatic wrangling, would require major industrialized 
countries, as a group, to reduce  emissions of carbon dioxide and other 
heat-trapping greenhouse gases. By 2012, the countries would have to 
reduce the gases by 5.2 percent from 1990 levels.

While 120 countries have ratified the treaty, it can take effect only 
when approved by enough countries to account for 55 percent of 1990 
emissions from the industrialized world. Without Russia or the United 
States, that threshold cannot be met. In 1990, the United States 
accounted for 36.1 percent of emissions, and Russia for 17.4 percent.

Russia signed the treaty in 1997, as the United States did under 
President Bill Clinton, and expressed support for it until about a year 
ago. The Bush administration rejected the pact, essentially giving 
Russia  veto power over its enactment.

Barring a reversal by Russia, the treaty appears all but dead, leaving 
uncertain the future of international cooperation on the question of 
global warming. 
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