BIKE: Kyoto Protocol

[Jeb Boyt]

This is probably a good thing.  The Kyoto Protocol has been on life support 
for years.  Now with it clearly dead, there is an opportunity to negotiate a 
new agreement on global climate change based on our current science and 
modeling.  The Kyoto Protocol was drafted in 1997.  The key question will be 
who will take the lead in drafting a new agreement.  I doubt that the Bush 
administration will initiate any productive discussions during its last 13 
months.

Jeb

----Original Message Follows----
From: dick ryan <dicryan>
To: forum
Subject: BIKE: Kyoto Protocol
Date: Wed, 3 Dec 2003 05:20:55 -0600

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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