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

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North or First World, which are most in need of GES. Uncontrolled and largely unregulated emission practices in such nations must be controlled, according to Dinesh (2000), is economic development is to proceed without unacceptable levels of atmospheric damage. Fossil fuels are also non-renewable and finite; alternatives that are cost-effective and less invasive and damaging can and should be found and used. Only GES will force industrialists and others to make this shift occur. Finally, as Matthews (1999) has noted, the Kyoto Protocol on Climate Change, which calls for GES, is a mechanism that has the potential to head off the anticipated or possible "climatic flip" that scientists are predicting as a possible consequence on uncontrolled CO2 emissions. Such a "flip" could so seriously distort the Earth's atmosphere that the glacier cap could be melted, causing massive flooding and the accompanying loss of life. These are some of the reasons advanced for GES in general and the implementation of the Kyoto Protocol in particular - a mechanism that would require signatories to significantly reduce CO2 emissions below their 1990 level and which the United States and Canada have yet to sign (Schelling, 2002). One of the most
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Approximate Word count = 1839
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page)

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