Kyoto and Climate Policy

All fifteen European Union member nations ceremoniously ratified the Kyoto protocol on May 31 at the United Nations headquarters in New York. Japan joined the EU in ratification on June 5. By ratifying the protocol, industrialized nations commit to lowering greenhouse gas emissions by an average of 5% between 2008 and 2012 in the hopes of curbing global climate destabilization.

In order to take effect, the treaty, which resulted from the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change at the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, and was signed in Kyoto in 1997, must be ratified by at least 55 countries representing a minimum of 55% of the developed world’s greenhouse gas emissions. Including the EU and Japan, the tally stands at 74 countries, but these represent only 35.8% of the developed world’s emissions. Russian ratification, still up in the air, would bring the crucial percentage to 53.2%.

America was joined by Australia on June 5 in rejecting the protocol outright. Prime Minister John Howard explained that ratification “would cost us jobs and damage our industry.” Defending his own decision to reject the treaty, President Bush rationalized, “I accept the alternative we put out, that we can grow our economy and, at the same time, through technologies, improve our environment.” The American plan, to reduce not overall emission levels but rather the