Redeeming the global environment:
Part 1 of a series covering Kyoto, Durban, and onward
Despite strong evidence--including four Ice Ages and the passing of the dinosaurs--American skeptics of "global warming" flourished at the turn of the 21st century. Only a determined few pundits and politicians still deny the existence of climate change 12 years later. The rest of the world is counting the minutes.
From plankton to penguins to polar bears, to coral reefs, birds, and the vegetation that covers half the earth's land surface, the world ecosystem has given notice about fooling Mother Nature. Tsunamis, killer hurricanes, cyclones, and tornadoes, the earth shaking in unaccustomed places, early springs and late autumns disrupting both animals and plants, rising sea levels endangering the world's ocean islands and continental margins. The weather, the fire, the flood, the ice....
So former vice-president Al Gore was right in 2006. The truth is more than just "inconvenient." And the United States is finally moving, although at a glacial pace (excuse the pun), to do something about a cataclysm that poses a far greater threat to our future than unleashing the atom did in World War II.
What about the other citizens of our world?
On December 11, 1997, all the nations of the world began to unite behind the Kyoto Protocol, a worldwide environmental treaty aimed to stabilize greenhouse gas formation and emission into the earth's atmosphere at a level that would "prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system." The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change drew up this protocol at a meeting in Kyoto, the symbolic emperor's capital of Japan. By September 2011, 191 countries had formally signed the international accords.
The protocol committed 37 industrialized countries and economies in transition (referred to in total as "Annex I") to reducing four gases (carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and sulphur hexafluoride) and two gas clusters (hydrofluorocarbons and perfluorocarbons) that produce poisonous greenhouse gases. The reduction targeted was 5.2% from the 1990 level. At the same time, world states began to phase out some uses of chlorofluorocarbons, the organic gases formed by methane and ethane that contain carbon, chlorine, and fluorine.
Most of these hydrocarbons occur naturally in crude oil, also called petroleum, and natural gas. Over the ages, decomposed organic material from the earth's ancient past beneath the surface of the earth has turned into huge underground reservoirs of petroleum. Coal is another fossil fuel.
Between 1990 and 2004, the Annex I nations achieved a cut of 3.3% in greenhouse gas emissions. By 2009, many--but still less than half--of the 37 Annex I countries had met or exceeded their Kyoto targets. Some of the states of the former Soviet Union (Ukraine, Russia, the Baltic states) and others lagged far behind the levels they originally sought to achieve. Others, most notably in the European Union, improved beyond expectations.
The non-Annex I nations ratifying the agreement concentrated on increasing sustainable development and enacting environmental legislation. Major technological improvements such as the developing nations' use of cleaner-burning biomass stoves also began to make positive global changes.
In all, 191 countries have been aware of and actively working toward the objectives laid out in Kyoto. All but about four of the nations of the whole wide world. Among these four--the United States of America.
NEXT: Why America broke the Kyoto promise.
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