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Global warming pact fuels U.S. debate

Global Warming

Important first step or did U.S. give away the store?

December 14, 1997
Web posted at: 10:53 p.m. EST (0353 GMT)

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Is the global warming agreement reached last week in Kyoto, Japan, an important first step toward solving a potentially serious environmental problem? Or is it an impractical pact that penalizes the industrialized world while letting developing nations off the hook?

That's the debate raging in the United States, where the Kyoto agreement has come in for strong criticism, particularly from Republican opponents in Congress.

"This treaty will have a devastating impact on the American economy," U.S. Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Nebraska, said Saturday in the Republicans' weekly radio address. "This treaty will do nothing to help the environment because it lets developing nations that will be the world's largest emitters of greenhouse gases ... completely off the hook."

Even officials of the Clinton administration, which signed on to the treaty, concede that there isn't enough support in the U.S. Senate to get it ratified. In fact, the administration doesn't even plan to send the treaty to the Senate until changes are negotiated.

"This should not be legally binding on the United States until we have developing countries meaningfully involved," Energy Secretary Federico Pena said Sunday on ABC's "This Week." "That is the last step we want to get before we send this to the Senate for ratification."

Treaty critic: U.S. 'conceded everything'

In Kyoto, the United States agreed in principle to cut its emissions of so-called greenhouse gases by 7 percent below 1990 levels between 2008 and 2012. The European Union, Japan and other industrialized nations made similar pledges.

It's impractical. It cannot be achieved. There's no practical way we can reduce energy consumption in this country by over 30 percent in 12 years,

— Bill O'Keefe, Chairman Global Climte Coalition

But large developing countries -- such as China, India, Mexico and Brazil -- were not subjected to binding targets for reducing greenhouse emissions in Kyoto.

Before going to the global warming treaty negotiations, the U.S. position was to reduce emissions to 1990 levels by 2010 and to insist on "meaningful participation" by key developing countries.

"We gave the store away (in Kyoto). We conceded everything. We got nothing," said Bill O'Keefe, chairman of the Global Climate Coalition, a business group opposed to the Kyoto pact, on "This Week."

"It's impractical. It cannot be achieved. There's no practical way we can reduce energy consumption in this country by over 30 percent in 12 years," O'Keefe said.

Pena: Pact 'historic first step'

icon Nations react to global warming pact
Reactions on December 11, 1997
For more background, see Our Changing Climate, a special report

But Pena and other Clinton administration officials insist that the Kyoto pact, while not containing everything the United States might have wanted, has started a process by which the problem of global warming can be attacked. Pena calls it a "historic first step."

"We have the years (for compliance) that we wanted. We have the targets that we wanted. We have a credit system based on the market which our companies wanted," Pena said.

The credit system would allow businesses in the United States and other industrialized nations to "buy" unused allocations of greenhouse gas emissions from other countries. Pena says a similar market system in the United States to combat emissions which cause acid rain has worked well.

But O'Keefe says the international market proposal would, in effect, amount to a tax on American businesses -- the proceeds of which would go into the coffers of other countries.

"We're going to go to Russia and buy their emissions. There's going to be one seller. Can you image what price they're going to ask for when we want to invest in a factory?" he said.

GOP may push for treaty vote

While the Clinton administration has decided not to press for ratification of the treaty, some Republicans in Congress are considering pushing for a vote. With 95 senators already on record as opposing any global warming pact that doesn't include limits on developing nations, it would almost certainly go down to defeat.

"If the president of the United States is going to commit and obligate Americans to a treaty ... then he should come before the Senate ... and defend it," Hagel, the Nebraska Republican, said Sunday on CBS's "Face The Nation."

But a Senate supporter of the Kyoto pact, Sen. John Kerry, D-Massachusetts, says opponents are using "Chicken Little" scare tactics to stop a process that is necessary to combat a serious environmental threat.

Kerry, also speaking on "Face The Nation," characterized treaty opponents as "the very same people who spent millions of dollars opposing the Clean Air Act, the very same people who told America that that would be the end of our economy, that (General Motors) would shut down (and) Ford would shut down."

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