After Kyoto: a climate treaty with no teeth?

• Author: Dunn, Seth
• Position: Kyoto Protocol climate treaty

Will the destabilization of the global climate be stopped? International negotiators took a small but potentially important step toward that goal at the Kyoto climate convention last December. Some 10,000 government officials, non-governmental representatives, and media converged on this ancient city's space-age conference hall for the most heavily attended and high profile climate talks ever held. After 10 days of chaotic, complex, and contentious negotiations - culminating in two consecutive overnight sessions - more than 160 countries formally adopted a Kyoto Protocol, legally committing industrial countries to reduce their emissions of greenhouse gases early in the twenty-first century.

The centerpiece of the Kyoto pact is an agreement by all "Annex I" countries - OECD and former eastern bloc nations - to collectively cut their output of climate-altering gases by 5.2 percent below their 1990 levels between the years 2008 and 2012. The main focus of the Kyoto deliberations, the final "target and timetable" was the outcome of a furious 48-hour negotiating session that followed U.S. Vice President Gore's announcement that his government would alter its hardline negotiating position - which had until then slowed the talks to a crawl. The European Union, which had called for a 15 percent cut, is to achieve an 8 percent emissions reduction during this period; the United States, which had wanted only a return to 1990 levels, agreed to a 7 percent cut; and host nation Japan, whose original proposal of an overall 5 percent reduction provided the basis for the final compromise, agreed to a 6 percent cut. Other nations argued for and received more lenient restrictions: New Zealand is permitted to allow its emissions to hold steady at 1990 levels, while Australia is granted an increase of 8 percent. And as current emissions from the industrialized countries are already 4.5 percent below 1990 levels, the Kyoto target actually represents a mere 0.7 percent decrease from today's output.

The required gains are weakened by various concessions and compromises, with which the final text is riddled. After protracted debate, negotiators decided that the Kyoto target would cover six greenhouse gases, but with different timetables. The three most important gases today - carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide - will be measured from the main, 1990 baseline. But three newer, more potent and long-lived gases - hydrofluorocarbons, perfluorocarbons, and sulfur hexafluoride - will be treated separately. Because uses of the latter three have grown quickly during the 1990s...