By signing the Kyoto treaty, Russian President Vladimir Putin put the global warming pact into effect and placed the United States in a diplomatic pickle. [Text of the Kyoto Protocol at UN]
U.S. refusal to support the treaty stirred blistering criticism from abroad. However, President Bush correctly calculated that - unlike the Russia Duma, which is certain to support Putin's decision to ratify the pact - the U.S. Senate simply will not ratify the Kyoto treaty as written.
But international dismay with Bush on the global-warming issue doesn't just center on the Kyoto treaty; it's really about Bush's decision not to take up the issue in any other way. The United States has failed to take any of several steps to slow the rate at which it emits carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.
Most scientists now believe that by burning fossil fuels, humans add to global warming - much of the scientific debate today centers on how much humans influence the pace of climate change. Global warming thus is linked to fuel efficiency and use of renewable energy.
Although Americans account for only 5 percent of the world's population, we generate about 25 percent of the world's annual greenhouse gas emissions. That's earned the United States the label of the world's worst polluter (although the moniker ignores strides our nation has made on other environmental issues).
Still, in 2002, the United States spewed more than 5.7 million metric tons of carbon dioxide, about a third more than the 3.8 million metric tons emitted by 28 industrialized Western European nations combined. Russia, the former USSR and several former Eastern bloc countries (all of which have old and heavily polluting factories and power plants) together emitted about 3 million metric tons in 2002, according to U.S. Department of Energy figures.
Yet U.S. law on automobile fuel efficiency, called Corporate Average Fuel Economy, remains stuck at the 27.5 miles per gallon set in 1986. If the United States stiffened the requirement to 40 mpg, the nation would reduce its carbon emissions by about 400 metric tons annually, according to the National Environmental Trust.
Bush also chose not to support the Climate Stewardship Act, sponsored by U.S. Sens. John McCain, an Arizona Republican, and Joe Lieberman, a Connecticut Democrat. The plan calls for the United States to cut greenhouse gas emissions back to 2000 levels by 2010. The plan failed 55-43 earlier this year, but McCain has been pushing for a second vote.
The amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere also can be reduced by creating "carbon sinks." The most effective systems are large swaths of native forests. Yet administration policy is to clear-cut our country's largest temperate rainforest, the Tongass in Alaska, a decision that makes no sense from forest-management or global-warming perspectives.
It's Bush's overall inaction on global warming, not just his opposition to the Kyoto treaty, that's earned the United States so much international criticism.
Editorials alone express The Denver Post's opinion. The members of The Post editorial board are William Dean Singleton, chairman and publisher; Jonathan Wolman, editorial page editor; Bob Ewegen, deputy editorial page editor; Todd Engdahl, assistant editorial page editor; Peter G. Chronis, Dan Haley, Julia Martinez and Penelope Purdy, editorial writers; Mike Keefe, cartoonist; Barbara Ellis, news editor; Cohen Peart, letters editor; Fred Brown and Barrie Hartman, associate members.
source: http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,1413,36~417~2447873,00.html 6oct04
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