Kyoto: Can it be saved?

By JOE GROSSMAN, UPI Science News

June 7 (UPI) - - The Kyoto Protocol, which sets greenhouse gas emission limits for entire countries, may well go into effect without the United States. However, if the United States fails to join at some point in the future, the agreement might well collapse, experts from five countries have told United Press International.

Two conditions are required for Kyoto to go into effect. First, the developed countries who emit a total of 55 percent of the carbon dioxide emissions of developed countries must ratify the agreement. Secondly, one-third of the total 175 participating countries must ratify as well. The basis for these decisions could be reached as soon as next month, when the talks suspended in the Hague last fall are resumed in Bonn.

It is well-established that the U.S. is not going to ratify the agreement. Canada and Australia are expected by many to follow the U.S. lead. The U.S. emits 36 percent of the total greenhouse gases among the 34 developed countries who signed an agreement in 1997 to continue to work on the problem.

However, ratification of the Protocol by the largest 17 emitters of the remaining 31 countries identified as developed would be enough to achieve the required 55 percent to put the Protocol into effect.

The seven largest emitters among whom agreement would be necessary are the Russian Federation, Japan, Germany, United Kingdom, Italy, Poland and France, in descending order of greenhouse emissions.

Experts in the Netherlands, Japan, England, Germany and the United States who are close to the Kyoto process said there is a fair probability that enough signatories of the Kyoto Protocol will agree to go forward, thereby causing the Protocol to go into effect.

Participating nations would be required to lower their cumulative national emissions of greenhouse gases to below 1990 levels. Levels would be measured from 2008 through 2012 and then averaged for those five years.

There is somewhat of a consensus in much of the scientific community that greenhouse gases, predominantly carbon dioxide, are increasing in the earth's atmosphere due to human activity and that these gases are causing and will continue to cause increased global warming. The issue of how much global warming will eventually occur is debated, although there is some consensus in this area also.

UPI spoke with Bert Metz, head of the international assessment division of the Dutch National Institute for Public Health and the Environment in the Netherlands. "There is the possibility, both technically as well as politically, that Kyoto can be put into force. . . .There are, so far, indications from most other countries, critical countries like Japan and Russia and European countries, that they want to go ahead with it. Canada and Australia are a bit less clear. All of the European Union has just made a declaration that they want to go ahead, preferably with the U.S., but if that is not possible, without. . . . Everyone is very conscious that in the longer term it is absolutely necessary that the U.S. get on board with these international agreements. Otherwise, it will go nowhere," Metz said.

A similar point of view was expressed by Tsuneyuki Morita, director of the social and environmental systems division at Japan's National Institute for Environmental Studies in Tsukuba, Japan. Morita said he thought that the Japanese parliament would go ahead, even if the U.S. left the agreement, in spite of deep concerns by Japanese industrialists that such a move would place Japan at a competitive disadvantage. "The Japanese industrial people want fair competition in the international market," he said.

Morita said, "If the United States leaves Kyoto, the international competition to invest funds into energy-saving technology, or new technology to reduce emissions, would become weak." Japan has invested heavily in clean energy technology in anticipation that there would be a large market for such advances.

Michael Grubb, professor of climate change and energy policy at Imperial College in London, told UPI, "Public reaction is very strong, basically just feeling that the Bush administration is being extremely irresponsible. . . .(There is) a feeling that the whole way this has been done has displayed an extraordinary lack of understanding or consideration about the issue or the rest of the world and also clear signs that Bush simply hadn't thought it through."

Grubb addressed the criticism made by opponents of Kyoto in the United States that it is not fair. "Ever since the (Kyoto) negotiations started ten years ago, it been accepted as a principle that the countries that emit the most now, as opposed to having emitted the most historically, and that have the most wealth and technology, have to demonstrate that they are getting emissions under control before asking the poorest countries of the world to quantify commitments. And that was an agreed principle in the agreement that (President) Bush, Senior, signed. . . . The science is increasing clear about the nature of the problem, while still being uncertain about its exact magnitude and timing and detailed consequences at the regional level," Grubb said.

In Germany the national goal is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 21 percent during the Kyoto period of 2008 through 2012, compared with the 7 percent target for the U.S. that was agreed to at one point.
Sebastian Oberthuer, senior fellow at Ecologic, in Berlin, the German partner in the Network of Institutes for European Environmental Policy, told UPI, "The Kyoto Protocol can be saved if a majority of countries actually stick to the Kyoto protocol and bring it into force. It is well known that it can be done. Everyone thinks that the U.S. is an essential player in that game and they need to be part of the effort in the end."

"One has to look at the whole process as a step by step process and we are only in the very, very, first stage of actually combating climate change. It is the clear understanding in that process that in the first phase the industrialized countries will take the lead and will take the first steps to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. The developing countries will then, also based on what has been learned in that first phase in the industrialized countries, take on quantified commitments later on, as well, and will become even more engaged in the fight against global warming," Oberthuer added.

In Europe there is hostility toward the U.S. position and countries are in negotiation to possibly proceed without the U.S., according to one American professor currently in Europe. UPI spoke with William R. Moomaw by telephone from the Netherlands. "The U.S. position of not moving ahead on Kyoto has generated intense concern and very hostile reactions in Europe. . . . The European Union is in intense negotiations with Japan and Russia. It's not a done-deal, but it's certainly something that's being strongly considered right now," Moomaw stated. Boycotts against U.S. goods are being organized because of U.S. refusal to limit carbon dioxide emissions, Moomaw added. Moomaw is a professor of international environmental policy at Tufts University.

Meanwhile, in the U.S., there appears to be more support in the Senate than there was a few years ago.
A spokesperson for Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, Democrat from South Dakota, told UPI, "Carbon dioxide and global warming are serious threats to the world's environment and we hope that the administration will take note of that and will engage our allies in serious discussions about how we reach binding ways to reduce carbon dioxide and if it's not Kyoto, then how will we do that. Voluntary efforts alone will not be enough."

However, the ranking Republican on the Senate Committee on Environment and Public works, Bob Smith of New Hampshire, told UPI, "I believe that Kyoto is fundamentally unfair because it fails to account for emissions from the developing world and is driven by uncertain economic and climate models. . . . I hope to move forward and get past the inherent divisive nature of Kyoto and begin to examine innovative and fair options for dealing with greenhouse gases."