ENVIRONMENT: U.S. to Postpone Ratification of Kyoto Protocol

By Jim Lobe Reprint | | Print |

Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON, Feb 12 1998 (IPS) - President Bill Clinton, facing strong Republican opposition in the U.S. Senate, is holding back on the ratification the Kyoto Protocol on reducing “greenhouse gas” emissions until developing countries formally commit to similar reductions.

Testifying Wednesday before sceptical lawmakers on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Washington’s top negotiator on global warming issues said Clinton will sign the treaty some time between next month, when it becomes open for signature, and March, 1999.

But Undersecretary of State for Business and Agricultural Affairs Stuart Eizenstat insisted that the treaty will not be submitted for Senate ratification until after key industrialising poor countries agree to “meaningful participation” in the protocol.

That is unlikely to take place before the major follow-up conference under the Protocol to take place in Buenos Aires, Argentina next November-December, according to Eizenstat. He said Washington will wage a “full-court diplomatic press to bring developing nations” into the effort to reduce greenhouse emissions.

Washington will tell these countries “If you don’t do your part, there is not going to be a treaty, period,” said Eizenstat.

The hearing marked the first time that administration officials were asked to explain why they agreed to the Protocol since the controversial treaty was concluded early last December.

Republicans, and even some Democrats, have railed against it, arguing that it could significantly damage U.S. prospects for economic growth and put the United States at a competitive disadvantage vis-a-vis developing countries which have not committed themselves to reducing greenhouse emissions.

Greenhouse emissions – which derive primarily from the burning of coal, gas and oil – are believed by most atmospheric scientists to result in the warming of the Earth’s surface and changes in the global climate. An international panel of scientists predicted in 1995 that average global temperatures could heat up between 1.0 and 3.5 degrees Celsius during the next 100 years.

While scientists are reluctant to confirm trends on the basis of one year’s evidence, the fact that 1997 was the warmest year ever and that nine of the past 11 years have set new records for warm temperatures has bolstered the view that greenhouse emissions are altering the global climate.

To deal with this threat, industrialised countries agreed at the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro to try to reduce their greenhouse emissions by ten percent below 1990 levels by the year 2000. Most of the parties to that non-binding agreement, including the United States, have instead increased emissions since that time.

The Kyoto Protocol represents the first attempt at a binding treaty to reduce emissions. Under that accord, 38 industrialised countries agreed to reduce their emissions of six greenhouse gases by about six percent overall between 2008 and 2012. Eizenstat said Wednesday the target would mean that the United States would have to reduce emissions in real terms by about three percent.

This faces heavy opposition from business interests, including oil and gas companies that have spent millions of dollars in advertisments warning against any agreement that did not bind developing countries. At the same time, the Republican-led Senate approved a resolution by a vote of 95-0 calling on the administration not to sign any agreement which might cause serious harm to the U.S. economy or did not also commit poor countries to limiting their own emissions.

One of the authors of that resolution, Sen. Charles Hagel, laid out his complaints Wednesday, noting that the Protocol “fails to meet either of the (resolution’s) requirements.” He also called on the administration to take “no action to implement obligations under the treaty through executive order, regulation or budgetary fiat” before the Senate has a chance to vote on ratification.

Eizenstat, however, insisted that the Protocol could not be submitted to the Senate because it is “not (yet) a finished product.” Describing it as a “work in progress,” he stressed that the treaty would not be submitted “until we get the kind of participation from key developing countries that we want to achieve and that you want us to achieve,” he told Hagel.

He said the United States would target in the first instance developing countries – such as Mexico and South Korea – which have already joined western institutions such as the Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), as well as those, like Argentina, which are lining up to join.

In addition, countries which are industrialising rapidly and whose greenhouse gas emissions were already reaching the levels of wealthy industrialised economies – China, India, and Brazil – will also be a major focus of Washington’s efforts, he said. Such countries “can afford to make binding reductions, or perhaps, if not reductions, at least reducing the rate of increase by an efficiency standard,” said Eizenstat.

Clinton is asking Congress to approve a 6.3 billion dollar package of tax breaks and research initiatives to reduce U.S. emissions as part of his 1999 budget plan. Most of the money is to be used to promote the development and sale of fuel-efficient vehicles and buildings. Eizenstat described the package as a “down payment …to get us on a path so that we’ll be ready for any obligations we may later assume” under the Protocol.

Republicans, however, have threatened to defeat these requests precisely because they see them as efforts to implement the Protocol before it is submitted for ratification.