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D Smith

Mike Hartigan writes:

In article ,
says...
Mike Hartigan writes:

In article ,
says...
Mike Hartigan writes:

In article ,
says...
[...] Kyoto only calls for reductions, not elimination.

Kyoto is what turned this into a blatantly political issue. Kyoto
calls for neither a reduction nor an elimination of global CO2
emissions. It simply prescribes a redistribution of these emissions.
It virtually guarantees that manufacturing would shift largely from
the US to so-called 'developing countries' (China, India, et al) -
countries that are on track to surpass the US in oil consumption
during the next decade, even without Kyoto. It's just one more
incentive to outsource.

...and that is the incentive to get Kyoto done, make every effort to
meet the targets, and then at the next stage of negotiations get more
countries involved, eventually getting ALL countries on side. The
exclusion of developing countries from targets should be considered
temporary, and that was the plan with Kyoto.

If that was the plan, then why wasn't it part of the treaty?

A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.

Have you ever watched what goes on in even a simple contract
negotation between two parties? Sometimes you just decide to leave things
until later.

So let me get this straight - You let the two countries that account
for approx. half the world's population, one of which is poised to
pass the US in terms of fossil fuel consumption, completely off the
hook so that they'll sign on to the agreement (although, what exactly
they're agreeing to is a mystery to me). Then, at some indeterminate
time in the future, they'll go along with it because you just feel it
in your bones that they will? Is that how you go about saving the
world?

That's what the next stages of negotiation are for. I don't know if
they will. I can hope that they will. There is no guarantee that they
will, but I think that it is less likely that they will if we ignore the
promises we make.

WRT your 'simple contract', neither party is held to anything that is
not explicitly spelled out in the contract.

Agreed.

Even getting a majority of countries to agree to something
like Kyoto is a major accomplishment.

Which of the major industrialized nations would that be? (China and
India don't count because they didn't agree to anything). What
percentage of the industrialized world's population do these
countries represent?

I haven't bothered checking populations, but Europe is on board. I
think the appropriate measures are the percentage of current
high-per-capita CO2 producers and total CO2 users, rather than just
population, though.

(answer: because that wan't the plan) Why do you suppose that the
Democrats in the Senate (yes, even Al Gore) voted *unanimously* to
reject Kyoto? That's an 'inconvenient truth' that I think most
Democrats would prefer to disregard.

I don't know. You'd have to ask them. I'm not even an American, and
have never lived there. I live in a country that ratified Kyoto (and then
decided to not meet our targets.)

Is that any more or less noble than not having ratified it in the
first place?

Probably less noble.