October 25, 2004
Russian Parliament’s Kyoto Ratification Underlines Bush Isolation
OneWorld US

In addition to setting the stage for the 1997 Kyoto Protocol’s entry into force early next year, Friday’s overwhelming ratification by the Russia’s lower house of Parliament underlines the degree to which the administration of President George W. Bush has isolated the United States from its industrialized partners.

Jim Lobe, OneWorld US

WASHINGTON, D.C., Oct 25 (OneWorld) – In addition to setting the stage for the 1997 Kyoto Protocol (news - web sites)’s entry into force early next year, Friday’s overwhelming ratification by the Russia’s lower house of Parliament underlines the degree to which the administration of President George W. Bush (news - web sites) has isolated the United States from its industrialized partners.

The 334-73 vote, which leaves only the pro forma action by the Duma’s upper house and President Vladimir Putin (news - web sites)’s signature before final ratification is completed, means that the legal requirements for the treaty, the first international agreement on curbing global warming, will be completed within just a few weeks at the latest.

Once Russia’s formal ratification takes effect, the treaty will become binding on all the 126 states that have signed it so far within 90 days.

“Entry into force of the Kyoto Protocol is the biggest step forward in international environmental politics and law that the world has ever seen,” said Jennifer Morgan, director of the Climate Change program of the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), which, along with a host of international environmental non-governmental organizations (NGOs that have lobbied for the pact for years.

“We have a completely new momentum in the debate,” said European Environment Commissioner Margo Wallstrom. “This will continue to raise the debate level in the U.S.”

With Russia’s ratification, the only remaining holdouts are Australia and the United States, which signed the accord under former President Bill Clinton (news - web sites) but then withdrew from negotiations surrounding its implementation under Bush.

Bush defended his decision by insisting that any attempt to reduce emissions as required by the treaty would unduly damage the U.S. economy.

The Kyoto Protocol, which calls on the world’s industrialized countries to reduce their emissions of greenhouse gases – those that the vast majority of scientists say are contributing to global warming – by an average of seven percent below their 1990 levels by the year 2012.

Its entry into force will also set the stage for a second round of negotiations in which the world’s developing nations, including fast-industrializing giants China and India, will also have to agree to either stabilize or reduce their emissions as part of the global fight against climate change caused by global warming.

Concern about the impact of global warming appears to be on the rise, particularly in light of the four hurricanes that devastated Grenada, Haiti, several other Caribbean islands and Florida late last summer, as well as the heat waves that struck Europe last summer, the accelerating melting of mountain and Greenland glaciers and Antarctic ice, and prolonged droughts in various parts of the world, including the southwestern United States.

Computer models of the impact of accumulating carbon dioxide in the earth’s atmosphere that is caused by greenhouse emissions have long predicted instability in weather patterns storms and other unusual weather events growing in frequency and intensity as the earth warms up.

“The weather patterns are changing,” said Dr. Paul Epstein, the associate director of the Center for Health and the global Environment at Harvard Medical School (news - web sites) told a recent press teleconference organized by concerned scientists. “It is becoming a signal of how the system is behaving, and it is not stable.”

The Kyoto Protocol is generally not seen in itself as the solution to global warming but as a first attempt to slow the rate of climate change by curbing greenhouse gas emissions that are caused by the combustion of oil, coal, and other fossil fuels into the atmosphere.

In 1990, the United States was responsible for more than third of global greenhouse emissions, Europe for more than a quarter of emissions, while Russia claimed about 17.5 percent. Under the treaty’s terms, a minimum of 55 countries, whose combined emissions came to more than 55 percent of global emissions, had to ratify the treat for it to take effect.

All member states and aspiring members of the European Union (news - web sites) (EU), which has been the treaty’s foremost champion, ratified the treaty, as did Canada, Japan, New Zealand, and all non-EU western and northern European nations.

Altogether, however, the ratifiers accounted for a total of only 44 percent of global emissions. With the U.S. boycotting the treaty, the only country that could put the Protocol into effect was Russia.

The result was a two-year lobbying campaign in which the U.S. tried to persuade Putin to stay out pitted against the EU which made a number of concessions designed to court the Kremlin, including giving it major advantages under a future emissions-credit trading scheme contemplated by the treaty and suggestions that it would receive more sympathetic treatment in its application to join the World Trade Organization (news - web sites) (WTO).

Environmental critics of the Bush administration pointed to the emissions-credit trading system – which ironically was pioneered in the United States – as a major reason for the U.S. to reassess its position.

Indeed, a number of major U.S. businesses are eager to participate in the system as a way both of making themselves more competitive internationally and of appearing sensitive to the concerns among consumers about the effects of global warming.

“The Russian government’s decision to adopt the Kyoto Protocol leaves the United States alone as the largest and most important industrialized nation to not adopt the treaty,” Jeff Fiedler of the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) told the New York Times this weekend. “Russian ratification means a new market and a new economy has been given the green light, but the U.S. is not following the signal.”

“The vote really does change the geopolitical landscape,” noted Fred Krupp, the president of Environmental Defense.

Public-opinion surveys in the U.S. also suggest a change in the political consensus here. California has taken a number of far-reaching steps to reduce automobile emissions in ways that would conform with Kyoto targets, while a number of other states and most of the northeastern United States have enacted laws to reduce emissions from power plants.

A poll taken in mid-October found that an overwhelming majority of supporters of Democratic candidate John Kerry (news - web sites) support the Kyoto Protocol, as does a majority of Bush supporters. Fifty-one percent of Bush supporters were found to believe that the president himself supports the treaty despite his record of steadfast opposition.

“At long last, it looks like the Kyoto climate treaty is finally going to come into effect, and the world can begin the crucial battle against global warming, the biggest environmental threat the planet faces,” said Catherine Pearce, climate campaigner for Friends of the Earth (news - web sites) International.

“But international pressure must be put on the United States and Australia to join the fight, too. If they want to be responsible members of the world community, they must wake up to the threat of climate change, sign up to Kyoto, and take urgent action to cut their emissions,” she added.

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