Posted on 12/06/2005 4:20:24 PM PST by calcowgirl
MONTREAL (Reuters) - While U.S. President George W. Bush refuses to accept the Kyoto Protocol to cut greenhouse gas emissions, at least 40 million Americans will find themselves bound to the international treaty to curb global warming.
Since the protocol took effect last February, Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels has convinced 192 cities to agree to cut emissions 7 percent from 1990 levels by 2012 -- the recommended target for the United States, which emits 25 percent of the world's heat-trapping gases.
The cities join an increasing number of states, including California and New York, and leading corporations choosing to follow the Kyoto lead even while their country doesn't.
They can act by using renewable energy and alternative fuels, placing tougher controls on auto emissions or building energy-saving green buildings.
"We reject the idea that is put forward by our national leaders in the United States that we have a choice to save the environment or save the economy," Nickels said on Tuesday on the sidelines of the 189-nation United Nations conference on climate change.
Bush pulled the United States out of Kyoto in 2001, arguing that the mandatory emissions cuts for some 40 industrial nations would hurt U.S. growth and wrongly excluded developing economies like China and India.
And since then his administration has shown no sign of budging on accepting mandatory curbs, to the frustration of European leaders and environmental activists huddling in Montreal.
"Unfortunately, we are experiencing Category 5 denials by the Bush administration," said Jerome Ringo, who chairs the National Wildlife Federation in the United States and uses the term for the strongest hurricane rating.
Ringo said mayors, governors and congressmen are "filling the leadership vacuum left by the Bush administration."
CALIFORNIA LEADERSHIP
Cities, states and Congress are also showing that acting on climate change is a bipartisan effort, not one restricted to the Democrats who largely stand behind the Kyoto protocol.
California's Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has won environmentalists' praise at the conference with progress on his ambitious plan to reduce greenhouse gases in the nation's most populous state 80 percent from 1990 levels by 2050.
Per capita carbon dioxide emissions in California are around half of the U.S. average and have fallen 30 percent since 1975, while they have remained constant for the country.
"We are all part of the solution on climate change. The governor recognizes that, while California is only a piece of that, leadership is important and we can play that role," Alan Lloyd, California's secretary for the environment, said.
As nations debate in Montreal how to proceed after 2012, a bipartisan group of 24 U.S. senators wrote a letter to Bush on Monday asking the administration to participate in talks in a "constructive way" and not block discussions on binding emissions.
Mayor Nickels hopes results on the local and state levels will eventually lead the United States back into the Kyoto protocol for post-2012.
"It is inevitable that after the cities and states show it is safe, the politicians in Washington, D.C. will join and again the United States will take its moral responsibility," he said.
MONTREAL — As diplomats from 189 nations meet here this week to discuss the world's response to global warming, California is unveiling a new set of initiatives to control greenhouse gases that would put it in the forefront of a burgeoning campaign by state and local officials to begin regulating the root causes of climate change.
California's action plan — which includes proposals to cap greenhouse gases and force industries to report emissions of carbon dioxide — sharply contradicts the official position of the Bush administration, which has dispatched a delegation to Montreal to reiterate its message that the United States opposes all mandatory limits on heat-trapping gases because, the administration says, such limits would hamstring the economy.
"We can't control what the national government is doing, but we can control what California is doing," said Alan Lloyd, the state's environmental protection secretary, who is leading a California delegation in Montreal. "We are big enough to effect change, and we are still looked upon as a leader on these issues due to our decades of work on air pollution."
Indeed, the United Nations' Montreal conference on climate change — the largest gathering of its kind since most of the world's nations adopted the Kyoto Protocol to reduce greenhouse gases in 1997 — is attracting state and local officials eager to share the message that some parts of the U.S. have begun to address global warming.
Among the state officials scheduled to attend the Montreal talks are Vermont Gov. James H. Douglas, Connecticut's top environmental official, Gina McCarthy, and Los Angeles Deputy Mayor Nancy Sutley. New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, who has pledged to reduce his state's emissions, plans to address the conference by videophone. (snip)
Let them. The rest of the country will prosper due to their intransigence.</p>
A lot of people out there think we dodged Kyoto. Nope.
Hey, this is fine with me...let cities and states cripple their development if they like...the more intelligent ones will grow economically while the do-gooders crumble.
...from a liberal tree hugging mayor of Seattle, who obviously either don't know about what the Kyoto agreement stipulates...or he don't care. I suspect the latter.
Doogle
States rights at its best. States will do what they want, and people will chose to live their or not.
Ping.
(I forget who has the environmental ping lists, so somebody back me up here... please?)
and the green stuff will die off from the lack of CO2 and stop producing O2 and greenies will die off and CA will be restarted from scratch... if we could only seal them off while they are stuck on stooooopid
Now let's see -- Washington, California and New York...bastions of liberalism...it computes.
"A lot of people out there think we dodged Kyoto. Nope."
He's playing to his moonbat base hooked on Corporate Europe's agtiprop campaign on "global warming."
There's plenty of incentives and regulations regarding general pollution emissions that urge emissions reductions. By other laws all emissions are being reduced, not just CO2.
That would be freepatriot32.
What a moron. Obviously any rational person or business in one of these socialist paradises will move out rather than put up with this idiocy. Then the pinheads will raise taxes to support their liberal agendas and further accelerate the exodus. Whining about the evil, greedy capitalists will be heard far and wide as their cities spiral into economic oblivion. So predictable.
I read this thing three times trying to find the names of the "leading corporations" who have "chosen" to play this enviroloony scam. I couldn't find any. Anyone else having any luck?
Thanks!
As if the 95-0 vote on a senate resolution opposing the Kyoto treaty had nothing to do with it.
Since they are talking about a gathering in Montreal, perhaps they mean Canadian businesses?
Business leaders call for climate change action
CBC News, 17 Nov 2005
The leaders of a group of major Canadian corporations have called for urgent action on climate change, a major reversal of the business community's position on the Kyoto protocol.In a letter to the Prime Minister, the heads of Alcan, Bombardier, Shell Canada, Falconbridge, Home Depot Canada and Desjardins Group, among others, said Canada needs a 50-year strategy to deal with the fallout from climate change.
(snip)
States choosing to comply with terms dictated by a foreign power is prohibited the Constitution:
Clause 1: No State shall enter into any Treaty, Alliance, or Confederation; grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal; coin Money; emit Bills of Credit; make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts; pass any Bill of Attainder, ex post facto Law, or Law impairing the Obligation of Contracts, or grant any Title of Nobility.
How so?
Of course all bets are off when the 'Rats take the White House again.
If states want to follow the treaty I should think that that is akin to the sponsoring politician commiting political suicide, he / she is loading the gun for the opposition.
LVM
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