After a decade of negotiations, the Kyoto global climate change treaty is set
to go into effect Feb. 16. But last December in Buenos Aires, the 10th U.N.
Conference on Climate Change highlighted the possibility that Kyoto will remain
relatively ineffectual on a global scale.
With Russia’s approval last fall, the Kyoto Protocol reached its ratification
requirement, which set in motion the treaty’s imminent enforcement in the
European Union and elsewhere. Nevertheless, India, China and Saudi Arabia still
have declined to sign, and developing countries are not included in the treaty’s
requirements. The United States pulled out of the treaty in 2001.
Without participation of those developed countries, which produce the majority
of potentially climate-changing pollutants, and developing countries, environmental
groups and others point out that Kyoto probably will have little impact. They
also argue that its regulations are not stringent enough. Also, if China, India
and the United States follow through with current plans to construct several
hundred coal-fired power plants, they may “swamp” Kyoto countries’
targeted carbon dioxide emissions cuts by 2012, according to an analysis by
the Christian Science Monitor.
Continued U.S. inaction may end up with high political costs, says Nigel Purvis
of the Brookings Institute in Washington, D.C. Kyoto “is not that environmentally
important, but it is politically important,” he says, because the European
Union and other countries “are making decisions without us.” European
trade policies may shift to tax the United States and other countries that do
not comply with “climate-change costs,” he notes.
At the end of the Buenos Aires convention in December, the United States cautiously
agreed to meet for a series of nonbinding “symposiums” this year with
European Union countries, even though it seems unlikely that the Bush administration
will reconsider its position on the treaty. The meeting ended without consensus
from ratifying countries on what will happen after Kyoto runs out in 2012.
Naomi Lubick
Back to top
 |
Geotimes Home | AGI Home | Information Services | Geoscience Education | Public Policy | Programs | Publications | Careers  |