What Makes Greenhouse Sense? Time to Rethink the Kyoto Protocol

Bibliographic Data

ID3513730
AuthorsThomas C Schelling (corresponding author)
Year2002
Volume81
Issue3
Pages2
Publication date2002-01-01
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueForeign Affairs (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0015-7120 • E-ISSN: 2327-7793
PublisherJSTOR (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.2307/20033158
OpenAlexW141534036
LanguageEN
Citations received11

The Kyoto Protocol should not be a parti san issue. The percentage reduction of greenhouse-gas emissions to which the United States committed itself by signing the 1997 Protocol to the 1992 UN Frame work Convention on Climate Change was probably unachievable when the protocol was adopted. The protocol then languished in Washington for the final three years of the Clinton administration, which chose not to present it to the Senate for ratification. In accordance with a Senate resolution calling for the fitl par ticipation of the main developing countries in the protocol's emissions-cutting require ments, that pause was supposed to allow time for negotiation to bring those coun tries on board. But nobody thought any such negotiation could produce results, and no negotiation was ever attempted. George W. Bush, succeeding to the presidency three years after the protocol's signing, had some choices and may not have made the best choice when he rejected the plan outright last year. But the one option he did not have was to submit the protocol to the Senate for ratification. The U.S. commitment to the protocol meant cutting emissions significantly below their 1990 level by 2olo-which required a 25 or 30 percent reduction in projected emissions levels. Such a cut was almost certainly infeasible when the Clinton administration signed the protocol in 1997. Three years later, with no action toward reducing emissions, no evidence of any planning on how to reduce emis sions, and no attempt to inform the public or Congress about what might be required to meet that commitment, what might barely have been possible to achieve over 15 years-1997 to 2012-had become unreasonable. The Senate will not confirm a treaty unless it knows what actions the commitment entails, and no president could answer that question without a year's preparation. No such preparation appears to have been done in the Clinton administration. Bush, in stat ing that he would not submit the treaty to the Senate, at least avoided hypocrisy. In declining to support the Kyoto Protocol, Bush outlined three concerns regarding any future greenhouse-gas

Economics · Environmental resource management · Greenhouse · Greenhouse gas · Kyoto Protocol · Political science · Protocol (science) · Climate Change Policy and Economics · Ecology

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