Last week, the UN forum on global warming announced a new compromise plan in an attempt to jump-start negotiations for the 1997 Kyoto Protocol on global warming. The Kyoto Protocol suffered a devastating setback after US President George W. Bush declared that the US was withdrawing from the accord because it harmed the US economy and treated developed countries with prejudice. We want to appeal to President Bush to use the opportunity to seriously reconsider rejoining the protocol. Otherwise the US, at least when it comes to protection of the environment, risks becoming a "rogue state" no different from China.
While China is undoubtedly a "rogue state" when it comes to issues concerning basic human rights and Taiwan, the US should get off its high horse when it comes to environmental conservation. Statistics indicate that the US has just six percent of the world's total population, yet it produces 25 percent of the world's carbon dioxide, a major cause of the rapid reduction of the ozone layer and the greenhouse effect.
Problems in the environment in most instances have a long-term impact across national borders and in fact, across the globe. A case in point was the "super sandstorm" sweeping across Taiwan these past few days. The sandstorm was generated in China's Gobi desert, yet it is expected to hit the Korean Peninsula, Japan and even places as far away as Alaska and the Arctic.
Similarly, and on an even greater scale, the global warming produced by the greenhouse effect impacts every country. In this kind of situation, the interests of individual states, including their economic interests, are not legitimate bases for declining participation in international efforts to combat global warming. No wonder many European governments have warned that the US decision could harm US relations with the rest of the world.
Most Americans seem to understand, perhaps better than President Bush, what is at stake here. A recent Time-CNN poll, taken after the announced withdrawal from the protocol, indicated that 75 percent of Americans considered global warming a serious problem, and 66 percent said that President Bush should develop a plan to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.
Since President Bush has vowed to continue cooperating with US allies to reduce the greenhouse effect, why not start by negotiating for possible compromises on the Kyoto Protocol? It just may save years of effort and negotiations already put into the protocol from going down the drain. In view of the premature death of the International Trade Organization and other international agreements caused by the lack of US participation, the Kyoto Protocol is likely to suffer the same fate unless the world's sole remaining superpower gets back on board.
President Bush's main objection to the Kyoto Protocol was the discrepancy between developed and developing nations. Industrialized countries are required to cut carbon dioxide emissions by an average of 5.2 percent below 1990 levels by 2012. Yet, the protocol does not require emissions cuts by developing countries such as China, which are the fastest-growing emitters of greenhouse gases. However, the new proposal by the UN forum on global warming would appear to somewhat address this concern by allowing developed countries to pay for "sinks" -- forests and farmlands capable of absorbing carbon dioxide emissions -- in other nations and claim credits toward their own targets laid out in the protocol.
The new UN proposal appears to give the US another chance to join the protocol. We can only hope that President Bush makes an effort to reach a compromise on the substantive terms of the protocol, so as to avoid turning the US into an environmental "rogue state."
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