Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
became the mechanism favored by most for reducing
emissions. There are other US inventions as well. How-
ever, the issue at home in the United States before,
during, and after the Kyoto meeting was the role of the
large developing countries. The US Senate in a resolution
in early
stated clearly that they would not ratify any
treaty that did not include some binding commitments on
the part of the developing countries. There were none
included, and President Clinton did not send the Protocol
to the Senate for rati
cation since he knew that it would
lose. On taking of
ce President G. W. Bush said he would
not send it on since it would not work if the developing
counties made no commitments of their own.
In a piece published in the New York Times of April
,
, I said that I agreed with President Bush on the
Protocol. This brie
y made me a darling of the deniers
who failed to notice the part that said the important issue
was what the United States would propose to improve it.
I was reminded of a line in Gilbert and Sullivan
'
s The
Mikado where Pooh-Bah sings,
And I am right and you
are right and everything is quite correct.
“
”
s position was based on projections that
in a few decades the developing world would be emitting
more greenhouse gases than the industrialized world. If
the developing world went on with business as usual, and
the industrialized world reduced its CO
President Bush
'
emissions to
zero, by
we would still be worse off than we were
then. He saw the Kyoto Protocol as fatally
awed because
it did not commit
the developing nations, and he
was right.
China (India, too) had a huge population and a low
standard of living. Their only hope to improve the lot of
