Political Science 211 (International Relations)
Fall 2002

The United States Marches Alone Again as the World Heaves a Long-Suffering Sigh:

- The Kyoto Protocol, The UN Framework on Climate Change, and the United States: Entities that just don’t mix -

          The protection of our mother Earth has been on the minds of many for years – decades, centuries, millennia, on the minds of everyone from religious leaders to activists to philosophers and kings.  Today, the protection of the planetary biosphere becomes increasingly important each day.  According to data collected by the United Nations, due to the introduction of large amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere by humans, “the mean global temperature has increased by 0.4-0.8°C and the sea level has risen by 10 to 15 cm.”[1]  The UN considers the current rate at which the emissions of greenhouse gases are rising – 0.4% per year – to be unsustainable development.[2]  The United Nations, among other international organizations, considers global warming and the issue of harmful emissions to be a major problem facing the world today.  Consequently, the United Nations, in 1992, put together the United Nations Framework on Climate Change (UNFCC).  The Kyoto Protocol is part of the UNFCC, and will be a legally binding treaty among nations to reduce harmful emissions by 5.2% globally by the period between 2008 and 2012.[3]  Many nations are involved in this initiative, one that the United States recently backed out of in 2001, under the George W. Bush administration.  Whether the United States has backed out of the agreement or not, it is still a force to be reckoned with in today’s world of multinational corporations and globalization.  Without Kyoto, the world may be doomed to a slow, long-suffering death.

          Before and since the meetings in Kyoto, negotiations regarding the fate of the world environment have occurred. “United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) established in 1988 the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Chance (IPCC).”[4]  This eventually led to the creation of the UN Framework on Climate Change in 1992, which was signed at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (Earth Summit) in the former capital of Brazil, Rio de Janeiro.[5]  However, the agreements reached and the Framework created for the Earth Summit signing “was in many ways disappointed to environmentalists, but was nonetheless a positive step in the control of greenhouse gases.”[6]  Since the creation of the Framework, many meetings between the parties who signed on have occurred, in places such as Berlin, Kyoto, Buenos Aries, Marrakesh, and most recently in Johannesburg, South Africa.  Kyoto was one of the more significant meetings, but left much unfinished business to attend to at later meetings.  The United States has since removed itself from negotiations regarding the Kyoto Protocol and the UN Framework on Climate Change.[7]

          What is the Kyoto Protocol?  The Kyoto Protocol is a 1997 addition to the UN Framework on Climate Change.  While more terms were set at various other meetings around the world in the following years, at the heart of the Kyoto Protocol stands the agreement for industrialized nations to cut their greenhouse gas emissions by 5.2% by 2008-2012.[8]  The conference, which hosted “almost 10,000 participants, including 2,200 official delegates and thousands of observers from non-governmental organizations and the media,” created the legally binding Kyoto Protocol, which “will enter into force after it has been ratified by at least six countries representing 55 percent of the total 1990 emissions from developed countries.”[9]  The 1997 meetings set caps on emissions.  It called for

national reductions of 8 percent by Switzerland, many Central and East European States, and the European Union…7 percent by the United States; and 6 percent by Canada, Hungary, Japan, and Poland.  Russia, New Zealand and the Ukraine are to stabilize their emissions, while Norway may increase emissions by up to 1 percent, Australia by up to 8 percent, and Iceland 10 percent.[10]

The agreement also seeks

a “clean development mechanism” [to] enable industrialized countries to finance emissions-reduction projects in other industrialized countries and receive credit for doing so [through an] international “emissions trading” regime.[11]

The emissions in question are a set of six harmful greenhouse gases that have been shown to damage the atmosphere.   The Kyoto Protocol seeks to lower the emissions of gases from this group by 2008-2012 to an overall percentage of 5.2% lower than levels in the 1990s.

Cuts in the three most important gases – carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), and nitrous oxide (N2O) – will be measured against a base year of 1990.  Cuts in three long-lived industrial gases – hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), perfluorocarbons (PFCs) and sulpher hexafluoride (SF6) – can be measured against either a 1990 or  1995 baseline.[12]

This will be no mean feat, considering that “if compared to expected emissions levels for the year 2000, the total reductions required by the Protocol will actually be about 10 percent” because most industrialized nations have done very little to curb emissions in accordance to non-binding treaties and agreements of the past.[13]

Many nations have pledged to live up to the commitment they made to the Kyoto Protocol.  The United States is not among those nations agreeing to the Protocol any longer.  Early in the second Bush administration, the United States removed itself from negotiations regarding the Kyoto Protocol.[14]  Perhaps this was a good idea.  Canada, which is among the nations that pledged to meet the standards set by the Protocol, is having some internal struggles over it.  Provincial government officials have referred to the Kyoto Protocol as “a costly fiasco” and every plan put forth has met with heavy resistance from various provinces, including Alberta and Quebec.[15]  Negotiations seem to be all but paralyzed in Canada.  One of the root issues in Canada is the claims of various provinces that they are already clean and do not need to deal with more government regulation.  Other provinces oppose plans on a purely economic basis – Alberta is one, as the nation’s primary oil-supplying province.[16]  It is not that the Canadians do not realize that they need to clean up their act – that the world needs to clean up its act – they certainly do.  Above average temperatures have caused drought and crop losses in the nation, smog-induced asthma in children is on the rise, the water levels of lakes and rivers is low, while new national security concerns pop up due to the opening of new sea lanes due to glacial melt.[17]  The Canadians know all too well that they are in trouble.

          The Canadian reluctance and “previous skepticism about Kyoto has provided some cover for the Bush administration’s opposition to the Protocol.”[18]  Bush and his vice-president seem to march in lockstep with industrial concerns regarding Kyoto and climate change.  In 2001, near the beginning of his term in office, Bush rejected the Kyoto Protocol, which the United States had pledged itself to under the Clinton administration, as “fatally flawed.”[19]  In addition to pulling the United States out of an agreement that could be detrimental to American industry – a major contributor of greenhouse gases – with his decision, Bush has only increased American isolationism.  Alan Geyer of The Christian Century explains:

The US War against terrorism has obscured a longstanding yet growing set of dysfunctional relationships between this nation and most other nations.  The US has become disconnected from the interests and perspectives of other nations on ever continent due to its isolationism, lack of cooperation, and unilateral actions…the Bush administration has aggravated this predicament by its disdain for multilateral institutions...

[Although a coalition against terrorism seems to nullify the argument] our isolationism has intensified.  Here are just some of the broken connections that have deepened and aggravated our estrangement.…

The 1997 Kyoto Protocol finally sets targets for reducing the “greenhouse gases” that contribute to global warming – and this nation is the gassiest.  That agreement, however, was opposed by some US industries and then by the US.[20]

Geyer’s article goes on to discuss other broken connections and how the United States is gradually turning away from the affairs of the rest of the world – except for, of course, Bush’s little pet project, the War on Terrorism, which was declared on September 11, 2001.

          However, no matter how much American industry may want to remain out of the Kyoto Protocol and the decisions of the world on climate change and greenhouse gas emissions, it will not be able to.  In the world of today, full of multinational corporations, in an age where globalization is the norm, many corporations in the United States will find themselves held to the Kyoto Protocol.  This is because even though their home nation is not part of the Protocol, many of their host nations, where they have invested and created operations, will be.  Perry Wallace explains.

…the United States has rejected the Kyoto Protocol, and it may not accept that measure anytime soon.  Accordingly, the corporate community could easily take this rejection and use it, along with its well-known objections to the protcol, to fight, without serious inquiry, for maintenance of the status quo....

Indeed, even if climate change proves not to be the threat that some claim it will be, an entire international legal, political, and economic structure is now being created.  This structure will likely affect in a substantial way the global economic environment.  And, notwithstanding the US rejection of it, the American-based transnational corporation will surely operate in many of the vast number of nations that reaffirmed (in Bonn in July, 2001, and in [Marrakesh] in November, 2001) their participation in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the related Kyoto Protocol.[21]

This development is not surprising, but for American industry to believe that just because the current presidential administration has rejected a major breakthrough in environmental governance that it means that they can continue to not care about the environment is a serious oversight.

          The United States rejection of the Kyoto Protocol under the Bush administration is not surprising.  Bush comes from a long line of oil men, and is notably close to the American industrial complex.  It is not surprising that he shares the views of that complex on climate change and emissions regulation.  Nor is it surprising that he would view maintenance of the environment as taking a backseat to his other projects, such as what has been referred to as “the Bush family war” against Iraq, or the recently begun War on Terrorism against Al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations.  Bush is not an environmentally-minded president, nor is anyone in the upper echelons of his administration.

          The United States is decidedly one of the major polluters in the modern world.  However, even without United States involvement in the Kyoto Protocol and the UN Framework on Climate Change, the mechanism can still work.  This is due, in part, to the fact that even though the United States has pulled out of the Protocol, American transnational corporations will have to conform to the regulations set forth by the Protocol and its accompanying documents.  This is because of the constraints placed on the host countries of these corporations.

          In truth, the United States is the one that is really harmed by pulling out of the Protocol.  The nation is taking a backseat where it could be a major leader in the journey toward a newer, brighter, and cleaner future.

Bibliography

Geyer, Alan.  America goes its own way.  The Christian Century,  5-12 June 2002.  Retrieved from OCLC FirstSearch online Database 6 November 2002.

Hourcade, Jean-Charles and Frédéric Ghersi.  “The Economics of a Lost Deal: Kyoto—The Hague—Marrakesh.”  Energy Journal.  V. 23 no3 (2002).  Collected from the OCLC FirstSearch Database 6 Nov 2002.

Wallace, Perry E.  “Global Climate Change and the Challenge to Modern American Corporate Governance.”  SMU Law Review.  V. 55 no2 (Spring 2002).  Collected from the OCLC FirstSearch Database 6 Nov 2002.

Contortions on Kyoto.  (2002, November 2).  The Economist.  42.

The United Nations.  Emissions of Greenhouse Gases.  The United Nations <http://www.un.org>.  Collected 6 Nov 2002.

The United Nations.  The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.  The United Nations <http://www.un.org>.  Collected 6 Nov 2002.

The United Nations. (11 Dec 1997)  Industrialized Countries to Cut Greenhouse Gas Emissions by 5.2 Percent by Legally Binding Agreement Reached by Kyoto Climate Change Conference.  The United Nations <http://www.un.org>.  Collected 6 Nov 2002.

The United Nations.  (2 Nov 1998)  Kyoto Protocol Talks in Buenos Aires to Promote Emissions Cuts.  The United Nations <http://www.un.org>.  Collected 6 Nov 2002.

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