Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
Democrat Robert Byrd of coal-rich West Virginia, in July of 1997 the Sen-
ate put its opposition to a binding protocol under the UNFCCC in writ-
ing. In the Byrd-Hagel Resolution, the Senate stated that it intended to
ratify no treaty that would either (a) “mandate new commitments to limit or
reduce greenhouse gas emissions” without “new specific schedules to limit
or reduce greenhouse gas emissions for Developing Country Parties” or (b)
“result in serious harm to the economy of the United States.”
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The resolu-
tion also stipulated that the Senate would not consider any treaty that was
not accompanied by a detailed plan of regulatory or legislative action to
meet its commitments, as well as an analysis of the costs of those actions.
If the terms of the climate change debate remained the same through-
out the 1990s, the Byrd-Hagel Resolution underscored the extent to which
the political calculus had changed between 1992 and 1997. In 1992, Bush
had somewhat begrudgingly signed a weakened treaty that did not assign
responsibility for emissions reductions to the developing world, and when
he did he met serious criticism for his foot dragging and lack of leader-
ship from environmentalists and congressional Democrats. But in the
mid-1990s, traditionally Republican business and industry lobbyists had
begun to court traditionally Democratic labor organizations, notably the
automobile workers' union (the UAW) and the United Mine Workers of
America, to an antitreaty position.
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This coalition lobbied against the
treaty intensely in the years and months leading up to Kyoto. They tar-
geted Congress specifically, driving a wedge between the administration
and the Senate on the issue. By 1997, fueled by the dual rhetoric of scientific
uncertainty and economic precaution (the latter cast in terms of American
jobs), opposition to a robust climate treaty had grown to such a degree that
not a single senator was willing to support a binding commitment to emis-
sions reductions limited to industrialized nations. Byrd-Hagel passed 95- 0.
Both the State Department stalemate and the Byrd-Hagel Resolution
put Undersecretary of State Stuart Eizenstat and the rest of the Clinton
administration's Kyoto negotiating team in something of a pickle. In light
of the more definitive conclusions of the IPCC's second assessment report
in 1995, the United States had agreed to the Berlin Mandate at the first
Conference of the Parties that same year. This mandate committed the
developed world to set binding targets on emissions reductions by as early
as 1997. But these commitments violated both the economic precautionary
principle of “no regrets” and the flexibility in international economic affairs
