NEWS: Kyoto Treaty Leaves the US Behind

POLITICS: Kyoto Treaty Leaves the US Behind

For years the Kyoto Treaty has been a pipe dream for environmentalists, thanks to the efforts of the largest polluter in the world – the US. The Kyoto Treaty is an attempt by most of the world's industrialized nations to significantly reduce greenhouse gases over the next decade.

However, in order to get 55% the treaty needed to be ratified by the US, which produces 36% of those emissions. The Bush administration claimed they would never sign the treaty, citing costs necessary to do so were unacceptable. This put all negotiations at a virtual halt while the rest of the world tried to figure out a way to get it moving again. Despite efforts by the EU to relax emission limits, the US simply wasn't having it.

But that was probably for the best, as the treaty in its original form is finally moving forward this week thanks to Russia, which has agreed to abide by its terms.

Not surprisingly, the two major industrialized nations which have refused to ratify the treaty – the US and Australia – are also host to conservative governments.

Scientists claim that there needs to be a drastic cut in emissions to combat climate change and this simply can't be done without the help of the nation producing more than a third of those emissions. Hopefully in years to come the US will learn some responsibility and realize it can't continue to spew emissions without consequences.

This is the cue for a whole bunch of Americans to defend their ridiculous cars.

"... it would gravely damage the US economy."

Heh, but y'know, pre-emptive wars are totally economically sound.

That comment hurts me. I think I'll relax by taking a drive in my gas-guzzling environmentally hazardous Hummer, you filthy commie.

^^^^^ That's making me feel inferior about my car

I'm going to sell my 35mpg '86 Mazda and go buy a Navigator to show my American pride.

Good gas mileage is for nature-loving, communist, Euro-trash pussies.


[Edited on Nov 23, 2004 by silverstreak]

35mpg is *good*?

For city mileage on a car that's almost 20 years old it's not bad.

Well, last semester I waited 4-5 hours a day in or for the bus. That seemed like a good reason to get a car. My ridiculous car is an extension of living in a poorly laid out town with terrible public transportation. Whatever my personal feeling about transportation, I still have to live with the system that is in place.

American cities don't have the benefit of hundreds upon hundreds of years of time to settle, most of them are still expanding. It's a lot of fun to design and install an effective mass transit system only to find out it's virtually obsolete by the time it's in place. As cities stop physically expanding and become jammed with people, their roads stop working well and voila, mass transit kicks into high gear. In a country this big and this empty, that will take a long time.

Here's something to consider, if the bus system doesn't work, few people will use it, if few people use it, it will get very little money and the city has no desire to expand it. The city has to take the first step, which would require getting more money from the state. The state probably wouldn't do much for one city so there would have to be a state-wide plan. A state wide plan would require both higher taxes and budget cuts from other programs, people here (and in most places) hate taxes, and couldn't be convinced that this is a good way to spend money. Why? Most of us have cars anyway.

I hope that the Kyoto Treaty does it's job, and I wish that America had been a part of ratifying it, but I'm not sure I'm idealistic enough to think that it will solve much. I say this without a great deal of personal knowledge of the treaty, but to my thinking most countries which are forced to choose between progress or a cleaner environment aim for the latter. Our dependence on oil will probably last right up until it becomes incredibly scarce, and then an innovator will find us a new way to create energy, and the crisis will cause it to spread quickly. That's more or less how the UK switched from charcoal to regular coal a couple of hundred years ago.

In the meantime, I think a much more efficient means of fighting global warming would simply be reforestation. The lands we've cleared in the last half century and most of all during the most recent century have contributed greatly to the proliferation of carbon dioxide, the more trees we have the more habitable the world is for human beings. This is something that anyone who reads this can help with, not just world leaders (though they might be able to contribute a little more, given the interest).

[Edited on Nov 23, 2004 11:21AM]

not surprising there was an article in sept. natl geographic that was pretty good

bad US policy

The only way to really vote these days is with your dollar. Since the people(!) that run everything are also the ones that own everything, show them what needs to be done. Buy a hybrid that gets 60 miles per gallon instead of a Puff Daddy signature escalade and maybe we'll have something.

Hmmm.. a treaty by the UN is supposed to do something positive? These are the same communist assholes who lowered their flags to half mast upon the death of that terrorist bastard Yassar Arrafat... The same bastards who used the oil for food program to line their pockets (along with Saddam and the French)... I wonder, does this treaty effect China? How about India? Ever been over to those two countries? If their pollution is alright then fuck me. Those are two of the DIRTIEST countries I've ever visited.

Fuck the Kyoto Treaty and Fuck the UN! While we are at it, fuck the EuroTrash Pussies who cowtow to such crap. I'll go jump into my Chevy Silvarado with a V8 and guzzle some gas!

I sincerely hope this post was satire that went over my head, but in the sad case that it's not, I rebut.

I see you went to the Stockula School of Debate; tell me how this has anything to do with the subject at hand?

And yet, even though India and China make up over a third of the world's population, it's the US that emits over a third of the world's pollution. So who's the dirty one?



[Edited on Nov 23, 2004 by AceTracer]

Uhm... Let's see. Kyoto was brought to you by the folks at the UN, those marvelous innovators of peace and justice.

If you accept the statistics, which I do not. Having been to ever major city in this country, as well as to Hong Kong, Shanghai, Beijiing, Delhi, Bombay, and Bangkok I can tell you they pollute way more than we do AND are not effected by this treaty.

If you were for John Kerry and his mantra about not shipping our jobs overseas then you can not be for this treaty, for that is what it is designed to do. Send industrial jobs overseas to "level out" the playing field.

Well now you've convinced me. Because you've been there, now I know for sure those numbers are bullshit.

Do you have any links to back this up?

*gets the [ignore] ready*

You should write opinion articles for the Onion, it seems you have a gift that even you are unaware of.

The stupid thing about Washington's refusal to consider Kyoto is that that refusal hurts American industry. What will happen is that industries everywhere else will become more energy-efficient, which will produce innovation and reduce costs. American industry won't do either, so its market position will suffer. Stupid.

[Edited on Nov 23, 2004 1:28PM]

has anyone intrduced you to stockula yet? you and he can compare notes on how to enter a thread without really knowing what the fuck you are talking about.

try this on for size, genius:

Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, or this one:

Tribunal for Rwanda.

or maybe you'll like this one:

Resolution for Use of Force Against Iraq

[Edited on Nov 23, 2004 by dead_ringer]

I really thought that's what it was at first.

Yes. 35 actual (not "EPA estimated") mpg city is a good figure. Bear in mind the difference between the US and Imperial gallons.

The 2004 Toyota Prius is rated at 59mpg city, 51 highway, which works out to about 54 combined. In the real world, under actual mixed use, the Prius returns around 35 - 43 mpg.

By comparison, a 2004 VW Golf diesel is rated at 38 city, 46 hwy, for a combined score of about 42mpg estimated. The golf diesel returns around 38-42 mpg in real world driving in mixed conditions, not far from the 35mpg figure noted in the quoted post.

The US EPA test procedure is outdated and dosen't reflect the content of modern cars nor the driving patterns typical in the US for the last 20 years, resulting in ridiculously overinflated estimated mileage for hybrids, particularly in the "City mpg" category.

It is when compared to this:

Sorry to disagree, but the final product that came to be the Kyoto Treaty was a piece of shit. Unless I am mistaken the overall idea was that if the highly industrialized economic powerhouses could not meet the quota they could "buy" pollution credits from underdeveloped countries. The underdeveloped countries in theory were supposed to be able to build an environmentally friendly economic infrastructure with the influx of cash from the developed nations.

Besides just being a plain bad idea (giving tons of money to corrupt 3rd world governments for some imaginary credits), it is also highly biased against countries with a low degree of government controlled industry (like the US), because they would not have as much control over the overall emissions that the country expelled.

Kyoto was just a plain bad idea, if they really wanted to help the environment, they would have thrown it out and started from scratch.
At the very heart of it, it's just another "throw money at the problem" piece of legislation that would not get the US to change, it would just make us pay a whole bunch of money because we signed a piece of paper.

Unfortunatly we're not blameless either. The waffling that has gone on by our government isn't all that great either. I would like to have seen us adopt these kind of measures without having to sign a treaty in the first place.