Kyoto Protocol Day 2025 is on Sunday, February 16, 2025: Kyoto Protocol?

Sunday, February 16, 2025 is Kyoto Protocol Day 2025. Kyoto Protocol - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Kyoto Protocol - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

It is bad America and it causes more pollution in the world.

The Kyoto treaty is nothing but a welfare program for 3rd world countries. It closes "clean" factories in countries with good enviromental laws (like the U.S.) and creates new "dirty" factories in countries with bad pollution records (like China ).

The Kyoto Treaty is a joke. Communist China and India don't have to follow the treaty but they are able to sell their pollution credits to clean countries in Europe. Because of the Kyoto Treaty, many European companies could not operate without purchasing pollution credits from 3rd world countries. And if those same European companies were located in China or India then the companies would be able to pollute as much as they wanted to.

China sells pollution credits to Spain for $375 million

China's toxic air pollution is entering the U.S..

"In California, Professor Tom Cahill tracks pollution across the Pacific, and a lot of what he sees these days comes from China. ...And these things...are coming from manmade sources in China, and laced in those materials are things like arsenic, lead and zinc," Cahill says.

The Kyoto Treaty that Gore wanted the U.S. to sign would have been an economic disaster for the U.S.. The U.S. would have had to follow the Kyoto Treaty even when "developing countries" would not have had to limit green house gas emissions. Gore's wants would have caused unemployment rates to skyrocket across the U.S. by moving U.S. jobs to so called "developing countries" (China, India, Brazil, South Korea, Mexico, etc..)

Thankfully, all voting Democrat and Republican senators agreed that the U.S. should not join any Kyoto Treaty that "would result in serious harm to the economy of the United States". 95 out of 95 voting Senators agreed that the Kyoto Treaty was bad for America.

What do you know about the Kyoto Protocol?

The Kyoto Protocol is an agreement made under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Countries that ratify this protocol commit to reduce their emissions of carbon dioxide and five other greenhouse gases, or engage in emissions trading if they maintain or increase emissions of these gases.

Objectives

Kyoto is intended to cut global emissions of greenhouse gases.The objective is the "stabilization of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system" .

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has predicted an average global rise in temperature of 1.4°C (2.5°F) to 5.8°C (10.4°F) between 1990 and 2100. Current estimates indicate that even if successfully and completely implemented, the Kyoto Protocol will reduce that increase by somewhere between 0.02°C and 0.28°C by the year 2050 (source: Nature, October 2003).

Proponents also note that Kyoto is a first step, as requirements to meet the UNFCCC will be modified until the objective is met, as required by UNFCCC Article 4.2(d).

The treaty was negotiated in Kyoto, Japan in December 1997, opened for signature on March 16, 1998, and closed on March 15, 1999. The agreement came into force on February 16, 2005 following ratification by Russia on November 18, 2004. As of April 2006, a total of 163 countries have ratified the agreement (representing over 61.6% of emissions from Annex I countries) UNFCCC.int Duwe, Matthias. Notable exceptions include the United States and Australia. Other countries, like India and China, which have ratified the protocol, are not required to reduce carbon emissions under the present agreement.

According to terms of the protocol, it enters into force "on the ninetieth day after the date on which not less than 55 Parties to the Convention, incorporating Parties included in Annex I which accounted in total for at least 55 per cent of the total carbon dioxide emissions for 1990 of the Parties included in Annex I, have deposited their instruments of ratification, acceptance, approval or accession." Of the two conditions, the "55 parties" clause was reached on May 23, 2002 when Iceland ratified. The ratification by Russia on 18 November 2004 satisfied the "55 percent" clause and brought the treaty into force, effective February 16, 2005.

Position of the United States

The United States of America (USA), although a signatory to the protocol, has neither ratified nor withdrawn from the protocol. The signature alone is mostly symbolic, as the protocol is non-binding over the United States unless ratified.

On July 25, 1997, before the Kyoto Protocol was to be negotiated, the U.S. Senate unanimously passed by a 95–0 vote the Byrd-Hagel Resolution (S. Res. 98)[2], which stated the sense of the Senate was that the United States should not be a signatory to any protocol that did not include binding targets and timetables for developing as well as industrialized nations or "would result in serious harm to the economy of the United States". On November 12, 1998, Vice President Al Gore symbolically signed the protocol. Both Gore and Senator Joseph Lieberman indicated that the protocol would not be acted upon in the Senate until there was participation by the developing nations CNN. The Clinton Administration never submitted the protocol to the Senate for ratification.

The Clinton Administration released an economic analysis in July 1998, prepared by the Council of Economic Advisors, which concluded that with emissions trading among the Annex B/Annex I countries, and participation of key developing countries in the "Clean Development Mechanism" — which grants the latter business-as-usual emissions rates through 2012 — the costs of implementing the Kyoto Protocol could be reduced as much as 60% from many estimates. Other economic analyses, however, prepared by the Congressional Budget Office and the Department of Energy Energy Information Administration (EIA), and others, demonstrated a potentially large decline in GDP from implementing the Protocol.

The current President, George W. Bush, has indicated that he does not intend to submit the treaty for ratification, not because he does not support the general idea, but because of the strain he believes the treaty would put on the economy; he emphasizes the uncertainties which he asserts are present in the climate change issue Corn, David (2001). Furthermore, he is not happy with the details of the treaty. For example, he does not support the split between Annex I countries and others. Bush said of the treaty:

This is a challenge that requires a 100 percent effort; ours, and the rest of the world's. The world's second-largest emitter of greenhouse gases is China. Yet, China was entirely exempted from the requirements of the Kyoto Protocol. India and Germany are among the top emitters. Yet, India was also exempt from Kyoto. . . . America's unwillingness to embrace a flawed treaty should not be read by our friends and allies as any abdication of responsibility. To the contrary, my administration is committed to a leadership role on the issue of climate change. . . . . Our approach must be consistent with the long-term goal of stabilizing greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere. Whitehouse.gov President Bush Discusses Global Climate Change

According to the information from the U.S. EIA, in 2003 Chinese energy-related usage produced an estimated 3.541 billion metric tons of CO2, while the U.S. produced an estimated 5.802 billion metric tons. DOE China, DOE USA However, on a per capita basis the Chinese emit 1/10th the CO2 that Americans do and Americans emit more than twice the CO2 as their counterparts in similarly developed countries like Germany, France, and the United Kingdom that have ratified the treaty and agreed to further reduce emissions. UN Statistics Division

In June 2002, the American Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released the "Climate Action Report 2002". Some observers have interpreted this report as being supportive of the protocol, although the report itself does not explicitly endorse the protocol. Later that year, Congressional researchers who examined the legal status of the Protocol advised that signature of the UNFCCC imposes an obligation to refrain from undermining the Protocol's object and purpose, and that while the President probably cannot implement the Protocol alone, Congress can create compatible laws on its own initiative.Opencrs.com

The White House has come under criticism for downplaying reports that link human activity and greenhouse gas emissions to climate change and that a White House official and former oil industry advocate, Philip Cooney, adjusted descriptions of climate research that had already been approved by government scientists. The White House has denied that Philip Cooney watered down reports. BBC (2005) In June 2005, State Department papers showed the administration thanking Exxon executives for the company's "active involvement" in helping to determine climate change policy, including the US stance on Kyoto. Input from the business lobby group Global Climate Coalition was also a factor. Guardian

At the G-8 meeting in June 2005 administration officials expressed a desire for "practical commitments industrialized countries can meet without damaging their economies". According to those same officials, the United States is on track to fulfill its pledge to reduce its carbon intensity 18 percent by 2012. Washington Post Paul Krugman notes that the use of "carbon intensity" means the target reduction of 18 percent is still actually an increase in overall emissions.NY Times

The position Bush has taken on climate change has shifted with a gradual increasing acceptance that global warming is a problem, and that it is partly caused by human activity. The United States has signed the Asia Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate, a pact that allows those countries to set their goals for reducing greenhouse gas emissions individually, but with no enforcement mechanism. Supporters of the pact see it as complementing the Kyoto Protocol while being more flexible, but critics have said the pact will be ineffective without any enforcement measures. Nine north-eastern states and in California, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, along with 187 mayors from US towns and cities, have pledged to adopt Kyoto style legal limits on greenhouse gas emissions