„The decision to leave the Paris Agreement was wrong when it was announced, and it still is today,” said Helen Mountford of the World Resources Institute. Some argue that the protocol does not go far enough to reduce greenhouse gas emissions[34] (Niue, the Cook Islands and Nauru added guidelines when the protocol was signed). [35] Some environmental economists have criticized the Kyoto Protocol. [36] [37] [38] Many [who?] consider the costs of the Kyoto Protocol to be predominant, some believe that the standards set by Kyoto are too optimistic, others a very unfair and ineffective agreement that would do little to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. [39] [full citation required] No country could terminate its intention to leave the agreement until three years had elapsed from the date of ratification. In 1992, President George H.W. Bush joined 107 other heads of state at the Earth Summit in Rio, Brazil, to adopt a series of environmental agreements, including the UNFCCC framework, which is still in force today. The international treaty aims to prevent dangerous human interference in Earth`s climate systems in the long term. The Pact does not set limits on greenhouse gas emissions for each country and does not include enforcement mechanisms, but rather provides a framework for international negotiations on future agreements or protocols to set binding emission targets.
Participating countries meet annually for a Conference of the Parties (COP) to assess their progress and continue discussions on how best to tackle climate change. Obama administration President Obama was elected under the widely held belief that shortly after taking office, he would take swift and decisive action to join the world in reducing greenhouse gas emissions and thus help fight global climate change. According to The American, „it was generally expected that Obama would quickly adopt a Kyoto-style national cap-and-trade program that would allow America to gain the moral upper hand in Copenhagen, inciting (or forcing) China and India to agree to emissions targets.” [61] Signing the Kyoto Protocol seemed like the first logical step, so it was surprising that he rejected the Kyoto Protocol for reasons similar to those of former President Bush. According to The American, „the fundamental shortcomings of the treaty were well understood: it set very ambitious – and costly – targets for the United States, while emissions from developing countries could continue to rise uncontrollably. (And indeed, today, despite Kyoto`s ratification, China has become the world`s largest emitter of greenhouse gases.) The Americans do not hesitate to contribute to a solution, but Kyoto has demanded a lot of sacrifices for little reward. [61] President Obama was also scheduled to represent the United States in Copenhagen and negotiate the terms of the extension of the Kyoto Protocol beyond 2012. But instead of the U.S. helping to craft and sign a Kyoto-like treaty, the U.S. is proposing extreme changes to Kyoto`s emissions management system, sparking intense debate and confrontation over which treaty Kyoto will follow.
Many countries fear that these new treaty changes will cripple negotiations and prevent many countries currently under the Kyoto Protocol from re-signing, as well as new countries such as China and India from signing them. „The Obama administration`s proposals could undermine a new global treaty and weaken the world`s ability to avoid the worst effects of climate change.” [62] When the White House announced last week that it would withdraw the United States from the Paris Agreement, it was hard not to hear the echo of the Bush administration`s 2001 decision not to submit the Kyoto Protocol – the world`s first international climate agreement to reduce emissions, concluded in 1997 – to the Senate for ratification or implementation of the Protocol. In both cases, a new administration burst into the White House and rejected a hard-won and hard-fought international climate agreement after the country initially signed it. Of course, the U.S. Senate had signaled that it would not ratify the Kyoto Protocol anyway, but the Bush administration`s announcement still served as a nail in the coffin of U.S. participation in the treaty. „A safer and safer, more prosperous and free world.” In December 2015, President Barack Obama imagined that we were leaving today`s children when he announced that the United States, along with nearly 200 other countries, had committed to the Paris Climate Agreement, an ambitious global action plan to combat climate change. He considered it unfair for the United States to exclude developing countries. The Kyoto Protocol, a landmark environmental treaty adopted at COP3 in Japan in 1997, is the first time that countries have agreed on country-specific emission reduction targets that are legally mandated. The protocol, which only entered into force in 2005, set binding emission reduction targets only for developed countries, based on the assumption that they were responsible for most of the Earth`s high greenhouse gas emissions. The United States first signed the agreement, but never ratified it; President George W.
Bush argued that the deal would hurt the U.S. economy because it would not include developing countries such as China and India. Without the participation of these three countries, the effectiveness of the treaty proved limited, as its objectives covered only a small fraction of total global emissions. President William J. Clinton signed the Kyoto Protocol but did not ratify it, while President G.W. Bush abolished the signature altogether. Clinton believed that a country-by-country approach to reducing greenhouse gases was the best way to address the problems of climate change caused by human activities. However, he was not entirely convinced of the treaty and the Senate refused to sign it without further negotiation. According to the World Climate Coalition, „the Clinton administration recognizes that the protocol is a `work in progress,` does not meet the requirements that the Senate unanimously set last year to sign the protocol, and does not want to be submitted to the Senate for approval.” Over the past two decades, renewable energy technologies have skyrocketed, their costs have dropped dramatically, and facilities have exploded around the world. Consider, for example: In September 2012, the Dutch Agency for Environmental Impact Assessment and the European Commission`s Joint Research Centre published a detailed study showing that the top 37 Kyoto countries, as well as the United States (which has not ratified the treaty), emitted 7.5% less carbon dioxide into the atmosphere in 2010 than in 1990.
[21] Although the agreement was signed in December 2015, it did not enter into force until November 4, 2016, 30 days after at least 55 countries, representing 55% of global emissions, ratified it. While all of this may seem like a reason to wring your hands, it also adds a greater element of urgency to the Paris Agreement than the Kyoto Protocol. The advantage of the stakes, so clear, is that the world cannot ignore the crisis, even if one of the biggest polluters decides not to contribute to the solution. This may be one of the reasons why cities, states, businesses and countries around the world have reaffirmed their commitments to the Paris Agreement and climate action following the government`s announcement. In fact, research clearly shows that the costs of climate inaction far outweigh the costs of reducing carbon pollution. A recent study suggests that if the United States fails to meet its Paris climate goals, it could cost the economy up to $6 trillion in the coming decades. A global failure to meet the NDCs currently set out in the agreement could reduce global GDP by more than 25% by the end of the century. At the same time, another study estimates that meeting – or even exceeding – the Paris targets through infrastructure investments in clean energy and energy efficiency could have huge global benefits – around $19 trillion. What precision? Well, accurate enough that most climatologists agree on a number – 2 degrees Celsius. This is the amount they believe global average temperatures (relative to pre-industrial levels) can rise before the effects of the climate crisis become much more dangerous and unpredictable. This level of increase in global temperature is roughly equivalent to the carbon dioxide (CO2) content in the atmosphere of 450 parts per million (PPM). .