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US rules out joining Kyoto treaty

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Ant:
US rules out joining Kyoto treaty
By Elizabeth Blunt
BBC News, Buenos Aires 

The US has told a UN conference on global warming that it has no intention of re-joining international efforts to cut greenhouse gas emissions.
The chief American negotiator at the conference in Argentina's capital Buenos Aires ruled out any move to sign up to the Kyoto Protocol for years.

He told reporters that efforts to cut emissions were based on bad science.

The US was focused instead, he said, on implementing President George W Bush's plans to promote energy efficiency.


At the beginning of this year's conference on global warming, the head of the Climate Change Convention had seemed to be offering an opening to the US.

Olive branch

It was suggested that in the next phase of action after 2012, countries might be able to pursue different routes towards a similar end.

The US mantra has been that it is committed to addressing climate change but has simply chosen a different path.

But if it was an olive branch, the US has brushed it aside.

Harlan Watson, who is leading the American delegation, told a news conference that this was not the moment for the US to reassess its policies.

Scathing judgement

He said US President George W Bush had a 10-year programme to reduce the carbon intensity of the US economy by 18% by 2012.

The government was totally committed to carrying out the programme and wanted to wait to see the results, he said.

But Mr Watson admitted that even if the US achieved its target, it would still be producing 15-16% more greenhouse gases while the rest of the industrialised world was committed to an absolute reduction.

He was scathing about the way the rest of the world was approaching climate change, arguing that the Kyoto agreement was a political document and not based on sound science.

Mr Watson said the protocol was more about being seen to agree than about actual action.

He challenged any of the Kyoto parties to match the US in the practical steps it was undertaking.






http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4077073.stm

Don Rizzle:
fucking disgusting the richest country in the world can't join up to something to make a better world, which the rest of the industrialised world has signed up too even russia

Woodrow:
I realize that most liberals strongly support the Kyoto treaty but often they seem not to look past the fact that it's a pro-environment international agreement. Thats all. Good policy decisions, environmental or not, need to be based on a detailed estimation of the effects; not simply warm feelings about the intended goal. It's not uncommon for economic and societal regulation to have paradoxical effects and actually encourage the opposite of their intended consequence and I know that Kyoto is one of those cases.

In particular, the danger with Kyoto is that it places legal caps on emissions from developed countries while enforcing no such requirements on third world countries. There are non-binding targets, but come on now... FEW Third world countries are going to sacrifice economic development for a non-binding CO2 emissions target. I can't really say I blame em. If I was living in poor squalid conditions I wouldn't be happy with my government sacrificing my chance to earn a better wage because the industrialized countries dumped too much CO2 into the air when they were trying to modernize.

The economic consequences seem fairly obvious to the educated. A plant built in a first world country, party to the Kyoto treaty, is likely to require a more expensive emission control system or the purchase of emissions credits in addition to the already high price of labor. Therefore Kyoto is likely to simply encourage the building of CO2 emitting plants in third world countries on whom the treaty is not binding. Even if some provision of the treaty or national law prevents the company in question from building such a plant themselves it will only be a short time before investors in China/India or elsewhere realize they can produce products much cheaper and construct a factory to supply them.

Now if the effect of the treaty was simply to move jobs and plants overseas I wouldn't have a problem with it. I think the idea that Americans should keep jobs rather than giving them to poor third world nations is fucking selfish. The claptrap that these jobs (who the people in the third world seem to overwhelmingly prefer to their former employment), are somehow actually bad for the residents of the third world is just a flimsy cover story so liberals don't feel squeamish about supporting organized labor. Sure there are cases where companies have moved in and abused the local population, However, it is damn insulting to suggest that the citizens of a democracy like India are not perfectly capable of deciding if a corporate factory or plant is to their national detriment or benefit.

Loss of jobs, though probably the main concern of the Bush administration, is not the real danger. More disturbing is the prospect that by further encouraging factory relocation to the 3rd world we actually increase CO2 emissions. Already most first world countries have some emission control requirements but by increasing the cost of emissions significantly we will push many plants and operations over the line where relocation guarantees a significant increase in profit. However, once in a third world country they will have even less incentive to curtail CO2 emissions thus potentially increasing global CO2 production.

This is much more of an issue for the United States, because of it's more liquid markets and production, than it is for Europe. Also Europe may already be affected by this problem by factories moving the the United States. So while European nations signing the Kyoto treaty may result in a reduction of CO2 emissions it is quite possible that the long term effect of a US signature would be to *ncrease emissions by encouraging factories to locate in areas with little to no controls.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding some important part of the treaty. I doubt it though.

Sure there are some serious practical issues. For instance what sort of auditing method can you use to insure greenhouse emissions are reported accurately, especially when the exporting country has an incentive to hide emissions. Also, how do you divide emissions between various products produced at the same factory some of which may be sold domestically others sent to a first world nation.

Do some research. I'd be willing to bet you both haven't even read the Kyoto Treaty

Don Rizzle:
your looking at it from a very one sided point of view. the idea is to cut emmission whcih won't necessarily mean factories will move elsewhere, but to add in the cost of the damage to the enviroment into the price which the consumer pays where market forces have failed to do this. its also to encourage developing nations to do more, we'd be hyporcrits if we asking them to cut emissions but not doing anything ourselves, plus its the developed nations who produce by far the most emmissions so we should really be working on reducing the problems not brushing them aside like the worlds worst poluter does. if america can't afford to cut emmissions then their markets are failing and should have governemnt subsidies to encourage them too or they should leave that industry its as simple as that.

Lincoln:
Canada signed up, yet the US has been reducing gasses better.

http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/Canada/2004/09/07/619442-cp.html

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