Efforts To Control Greenhouse Gases

Due to overwhelming scientific evidence and growing political interest, global warming is currently recognized as an important national and international issue. Since 1992 representatives from over 160 countries have met regularly to discuss how to reduce worldwide greenhouse gas emissions. In 1997 representatives met in Kyōto, Japan, and produced an agreement, known as the Kyōto Protocol, which requires industrialized countries to reduce their emissions by 2012 to an average of 5 percent below 1990 levels. To help countries meet this agreement cost-effectively, negotiators are trying to develop a system in which nations that have no obligations or that have successfully met their reduced emissions obligations could profit by selling or trading their extra emissions quotas to other countries that are struggling to reduce their emissions. Negotiating such detailed emissions trading rules has been a contentious task for the world community since the signing of the Kyōto Protocol. A ratified agreement is still not yet in force, and ratification received a setback in 2001 when newly elected U.S. president George W. Bush renounced the treaty on the grounds that the required carbon-dioxide reductions in the United States would be too costly. He also objected that developing nations would not be bound by similar carbon-dioxide reducing obligations. However, many experts expect that as the scientific evidence about the dangers of global warming continues to mount, nations will be motivated to cooperate more effectively to reduce the risks of climate change.