Should the U.S. Sign the Kyoto Protocol?

On December 11, 1997, negotiators from 159 countries met until the early hours of the morning in Kyoto, Japan, to create an agreement on curbing the world's use of fossil fuels. Fossil fuels are regarded by scientists and policymakers as a primary source of so-called "greenhouse gasses," which lodge in the earth's atmosphere and, much like a pane of glass, prevent the sun's heat from escaping into space (Bergman, 2002). The end result of accumulated gasses - largely consisting of carbon dioxide, the worst and most damaging by-product of burned fossil fuels - is seen by Bergman (2002) as global warming. The United States has not as yet signed the Kyoto Protocol - a vital legislative and regulatory framework that should be made international law. This report will argue that the U.S. should ratify this important proposal.

At Kyoto, held five years after the 1992 Rio de Janeiro Framework Convention on Climate Change, the 24 members of the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and the European countries of the former Soviet Union pledged to cut their greenhouse gas emissions by 2010 (Cooper, 1998). In 2001, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) predicted that the Earth's average surface temperature would gradually rise by as much as 10 degrees Fahrenheit during this century - a shift that is larger than any which has been seen in the past 10,000 years (A climate thresholdà