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The Earth Summit in Rio de Janiero In 1992, 166 nations adopted the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) during the Earth Summit in Rio de Janiero in response to the overwhelming evidence that emissions are polluting the planet and, in turn, heating up the world. This framework called for voluntary reductions of greenhouse gas emissions, with a goal of reducing greenhouse gases to 1990 levels by the year 2000. The voluntary reduction didn't work: all industrialized nations continued to increase gas emissions, and not one country complied with the treaty's voluntary goals.
In response to the failure of voluntary reductions, the 1997 Kyoto Protocol was created to establish mandatory commitments of reductions for heavily industrialized nations. If ratified and put into force, individual countries would have legally binding targets for reducing emissions in carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide. Thirty-eight industrialized countries would be obligated to cut emissions to five percent below 1990 levels. The operational details of the climate treaty were to be negotiated through future conferences over the next four years. When Pacific Islanders learned of the potential impacts that sea level rise could have on their nation-states, they banded together to bring their plight to greater international attention, forming the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS). The AOSIS consequently brought more urgency to the climate change issue. It Ain't Easy Being Green Since 1997, numerous conferences have been held by the UNFCCC in order to work out the details of the Kyoto Protocol, but negotiations have broken down year after year, as delegates clash on a range of issues. One main point of contention was the purchase of pollution "credits," which can buy a heavily polluting nation flexibility in reaching emissions targets from countries who have fulfilled their own targets. While Americans want to buy these credits, Europeans feel that the United States is trying to avoid its obligation to cut emissions in its own country. At the most recent conference to date in November 2000, talks failed because the United States sought to get halfway to its emissions-cutting target by using its vast forests and farmland as carbon dioxide "sinks," which the environmental groups and the European Union claimed was an unfair way for the world's biggest emitter of greenhouse gases to reduce its target.
In March 2001, President Bush announced that his administration would not seek to regulate power plants' emissions of carbon dioxide. The President was under strong pressure from conservative Republicans and industry groups to reverse his campaign pledge, because they feared any regulation of CO2 emissions would deal a blow to the energy industry. The burden to regulate emissions would fall most heavily on coal-burning power plants, which account for 50 percent of the electricity generated in the United States. Citing the "incomplete state of scientific knowledge of the causes of, and solutions to, global climate change and the lack of commercially available technologies for removing and storing carbon dioxide," Bush said that reducing emissions was inconsistent with his goal of increasing domestic energy production. The Kyoto Protocol, negotiated and signed by the Clinton administration, faces opposition from many senators, who view the agreement as a potential harm to the economy and because it would allow American energy policy to be governed by an international treaty. Negotiators and independent experts on the Kyoto Protocol say that efforts to complete the treaty have been seriously damaged by Bush's refusal to regulate carbon dioxide emissions. Negotiations between nations will begin again at a continuation of the United Nations' Conference of the Parties-6 in July 2001. |
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