George W. Bush faced criticism in the US and other parts of the world when he announced that the US would not only fail to ratify but walk away from the Kyoto protocol. Many green party politicians and environmentalists in Europe criticized the Bush administration for their decision that was viewed as anti-environmental. Furthermore, the decision to walk away from the Kyoto Protocol was taken in his first 100 days in office (Copeland & Taylor, 2015). However, the people who supported the move by Bush insisted that the decision was inevitable because it may have opened an opportunity to renegotiate a more efficient and equitable treaty on global warming. The collapse of the Kyoto protocol may prove that most people remain unconvinced that global warming was a serious risk to the survival of man. The paper will seek to analyze the collapse of the Kyoto protocol.
History of the Kyoto Protocol
The Kyoto protocol was the outgrowth of the Earth Summit that took place in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. Before the Earth Summit took place, the signers had agreed that global warming was a very crucial problem that was facing humanity and that the developed nations needed to take critical steps that would either control or minimize the production and emission of greenhouse gasses. The chief greenhouse gas was carbon dioxide that was a byproduct of both manmade and natural processes (Barrett, 2008). One of the primary sources of the emission of carbon dioxide was the burning of fossil fuels. After agreeing that climate change was a serious threat, the deferred to a later date when they would discuss the actions they would take to address the problem. The Rio De Janeiro Treaty was agreed in 1995, but most of the countries agreed that the measures that had been proposed were inadequate to deal with global warming.
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The negotiations for a better treaty resulted to the Kyoto protocol that came into place in 1997. The treaty set particular targets and timetables for the developed and industrialized nations to control their carbon emission. The negotiations proposed that 38 industrialized nations were supposed to control their greenhouse gas emission. However, the treaty made it clear that it did not require the developing countries to start the immediate control of their greenhouse gas emission (Grubb, 2013). Also, it stated that in the future, all the developing nations would be required to control their greenhouse gas emission. It led to the formulation of a fixed timetable that had set targets for the reduction of greenhouse gasses. The US was one of the main founders of the treaty and pledged to minimize it greenhouse gas emission by more than 10% below its emission levels in 1990.
The Collapse of the Kyoto Protocol
Despite the key role of the US in the formulation of the Kyoto protocol, the Senate landed a deadly blow on the possibility of the ratification after they unanimously voted against the Kyoto protocol. The vote set a stage that would allow Bill Clinton and Al Gore to pull out of the negotiation table. It also set a stage that would allow the US to officially walk away from the treaty. One of the initial countries to ratify the treaty was Romania. However, it only ratified the treaty because it was the country that would receive a windfall profit from the industrialized nations because of the carbon trading policy (Victor, 2014). Most countries argued that the treaty was the wrong solution for the right problem. Nevertheless, most critics argued that the main reason why the treaty collapsed was because the delegates were required to work against a deadline.
Little measures had been taken to prepare the solutions and come up with feasible architectural solutions. The delegates had conducted a little research before they came up with the Kyoto. There were so many details that needed to be ironed out that they only agreed to the basic requirements while deferring the most important decisions to a later date. There were various missing details such as the accounting system that would allow emission trading and give a chance to developing nations to earn credits if they implemented projects that reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The negotiations were just around the clock, and most of the critical decisions were just pushed down the road (McKibbin, Ross, Shackleton, & Wilcoxen, 2015). Some of the governments were negotiating commitments that they had little knowledge of their repercussions. Furthermore, they had not agreed on the rules, and it was placing the cart ahead of the horse. It led to a series of unproductive meetings that were crucial in the collapse of the treaty.
After the treaty had been formulated, reality dawned. The delegates had papered over many differences that caused many nations to start disagreeing with the treaty. One of the contentious topics in the Kyoto protocol was the discussions on the carbon sinks that led to the collapse of the Hague talks regarding the Kyoto protocol. Carbon sinks refer to natural processes that often absorb carbon dioxide from the immediate atmosphere. The US, Canada, Japan, and other allied countries wanted the treaty to include the use of large masses of agricultural land and forests as a measure to reduce or meet the emission targets (Barrett, 2008). It was a solution that was quite easy and cheap for Canada and the US to implement. However, the Europeans were quite opposed to the idea that has been proposed by the US and its allied countries.
Europe was against the proposal by the US and its allies because the felt that the US and Canada would not take decisive measures to control global warming because they would simply state the amount of land under agriculture and forests. Europe suggested the dismantling or reduction in the use of the coal power plants and enhancing the vehicle fuel economy (Victor, 2014). If the proposal by the US were accepted, they would simply state the amount of land they had set aside for forests and farmland and argue that it had met its targets. Nevertheless, it was critical to note that there was no system that would adequately measure the amount of carbon dioxide that is absorbed by agricultural lands and forests. The lack of a concrete system that would measure the absorption of carbon dioxide by carbon sinks also led to the collapse of the Hague talks.
The Hague meeting was quite critical because it was meant to iron out the issues that were pending. A lot of international ties were at stake if the regulations regarding carbon sinks were accepted. The proposals would ensure that the US faced little costs while the European proposals would have come at a great financial burden for the US (Copeland & Taylor, 2015). Moreover, they had not set a deadline when the signatories of the protocol were supposed to ratify it. Germany had suggested 2002 because the implementation of the treaty was drawing nearer and the countries that had not ratified the treaty would have had little time to implement the protocol. The implementation date of the treaty was between 2008 and 2012. Some of the countries only ratified the protocol recently and did not see the need to hasten their implementation of the agreements.
Five years after the deadline for the 2012 implementation of the Kyoto protocol, various researchers argue that the legislation was ineffective. For instance, instead of reducing the GHG emission, the global emission had increased by 58% (Grubb, 2013). The major flaw of the Kyoto protocol was the legislation regarding emission credits. The emission credit did not minimize GHG emission due to the fact that developed countries were allowed to outsource to the other countries after they had traded their credits. basically, it favored the transfer of pollution from the developed countries to other nations. Also, the treaty rewarded countries that funded sustainable energy and planted trees while they did not recognize the nations that enhanced their preservation and conservation efforts. Nevertheless, the Kyoto protocol was one of the initial steps that allowed the world to unite in its efforts against global warming.
The paper has analyzed the collapse of the Kyoto protocol. The Kyoto protocol was the outgrowth of the Earth Summit that took place in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. Global warming is a very crucial problem that is facing humanity, and the developed nations need to take critical steps that would either control or minimize the production and emission of greenhouse gasses. Global warming is an international issue; it was incorrect to assume that only developed nations were required to control their GHG emissions (Huang, Lee, & Wu, 2008). The treaty may have given an economic advantage to developing nations because they were not required to control the GHG emission, but it would have only increased the emission of GHG. Little measures had been taken to prepare the solutions and come up with feasible architectural solutions. The delegates had conducted a little research before they came up with the Kyoto. The delegates had papered over many differences that caused many nations to start disagreeing with the treaty. Ultimately, the treaty did not meet the intended goals.
References
Barrett, S. (2008). The political economy of the Kyoto Protocol. Oxford review of economic policy , 14 (4), 20-39.
Copeland, B. R., & Taylor, M. S. (2015). Free trade and global warming: a trade theory view of the Kyoto protocol. Journal of Environmental Economics and Management , 49 (2), 205-234.
Grubb, M. (2013). The economics of the Kyoto Protocol. WORLD ECONOMICS-HENLEY ON THAMES- , 4 (3), 143-190.
Huang, W. M., Lee, G. W., & Wu, C. C. (2008). GHG emissions, GDP growth, and the Kyoto Protocol: A revisit of Environmental Kuznets Curve hypothesis. Energy Policy , 36 (1), 239-247.
McKibbin, W. J., Ross, M. T., Shackleton, R., & Wilcoxen, P. J. (2015). Emissions trading, capital flows and the Kyoto Protocol. The Energy Journal , 287-333.
Victor, D. G. (2014). The collapse of the Kyoto Protocol and the struggle to slow global warming . Princeton University Press.
