Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
climate convention represented remarkable cooperative achievements in
the protection of the global environment. In a period of massive political
transition, the global political community managed to overcome signifi-
cant conflicts of values and interests to tackle a major, future-tense global
environmental problem head-on. The treaty was a historic one.
And yet, the UNFCCC was not actually much of an agreement, not
even a compromise one. The convention had succeeded only by tabling—
rather than resolving— the two most contentious problems of climate
change policy. The problems of binding targets and timetables and of
developing-world responsibilities haunted negotiations throughout the
processes of national ratification and the first three subsequent Confer-
ences of the Parties. Time did not heal the rifts between Americans and
Europeans or between the global North and South. More than anything,
it gave the parties involved a chance to regroup and dig in. Between 1992
and 1997, a changing domestic American political scene, new geopo-
litical wrinkles stemming from increasing economic globalization, and
rapid, resource-intensive economic growth in China and India fostered
a retrenchment of the adversarial positions espoused at Rio. In 1997, at
the introduction of the first binding protocol of the climate convention in
Kyoto, Japan, the international community recapitulated the debate over
the UNFCCC. When they did, the seeds of discontent sown into the con-
vention and fertilized by the changing political context of the 1990s began
to flower into outright failure.
Adopted on December 11, 1997, the Kyoto Protocol committed the
thirty-seven industrialized-world signatories of the UNFCCC to a collec-
tive 5.2 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions below the “baseline”
levels of 1990, to be achieved between 2008 and 2012.
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Targets for each
nation differed, reflecting negotiations over differences in things like per
capita emissions, GDP, and historical responsibility. The United States,
for example, faced an emissions reduction of about 7 percent below 1990
levels, while Australia's target stood at 8 percent above its base level. The
protocol encompassed four major greenhouse gases: CO
2
, methane (CH
4
),
nitrogen oxides (NO
x
), and sulfur hexafluoride (SF
6
). It also addressed
two other groups of artificial anthropogenic gases— hydrofluorocarbons
and perfluorocarbons— produced primarily through the industrial pro-
cesses of the developed world and used as refrigerants, lubricants, and
solvents. It specifically did not include gases addressed by the Montreal
