The treaty has been ratified by more than 100 countries, including Japan and all the countries of the European Union.
But the refusal of the United States and Australia to sign up means only Russia had sufficient 1990 emissions to push the total up to the 55 percent figure. ***
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July 25, 2002 - Robert Novak: Kyoto: Still Signed (A word of warning back when Russia was with us on rejecting Kyoto)
WASHINGTON (Creators Syndicate, Inc.) -- Is the Bush administration going to "unsign" the Kyoto global warming treaty just as it unsigned the International Criminal Court (ICC) treaty? "We can do that," replied one senior official, "but we won't do it." The principal reason: quiet but decisive influence by National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice.
Advocates of scrapping the pact initialed at Kyoto in 1997 until recently were on course to make it the latest of Bill Clinton's diplomatic agreements to be stripped of its U.S. signatures. Dick Cheney, perhaps the most active, powerful vice president ever, was behind the effort. That was before the intervention of Dr. Rice, who is matching her higher profile predecessors in backstage power. In the international treaty question, she reflects the views of European allies, the State Department bureaucracy and the American foreign policy establishment.
George W. Bush is in the middle, buffeted by opposing pressures. He ended up wavering on adherence to the ICC in a way that satisfied nobody on an issue about prestige and ideology. In contrast, the Kyoto treaty involves the future health of the American economy -- making it all the more peculiar that the Bush administration is so sensitive to foreign pressures.
President Bush's conviction that the one-sided Kyoto pact threatens prosperity here is not in doubt. While Kyoto will not be ratified while he is in the White House, there is no statute of limitations for diplomatic treaties. Accordingly, a future Democratic president—elected in 2004 or later—could push it through the Senate.
To prevent that, the U.S. would disavow Kyoto—unsign the treaty—prior to the United Nations global warming conference in Johannesburg beginning August 26. The plan, under Cheney's patronage, was to unsign Kyoto before the Johannesburg meeting and then submit it to the U.N. (as was done with the ICC). Bush disconnected from the Rome treaty establishing the ICC just before it went into effect.
Now that Rice has scuttled Kyoto unsigning plans, the global warming treaty at long last may go into effect at Johannesburg without U.S. approval. If Secretary of State Colin Powell insists on attending the conference, however, that could be interpreted as tacit American support. .........
http://www.cnn.com/2002/ALLPOLITICS/07/25/column.novak/
So, the question becomes: "What does Rice get out of this?"
If the American people are to be held holstage to the vagaries of one woman in the President's cabinet then they have a right to know why.
Kyoto is a threat to the American way of life, and Bush realized that early in his administration. What, now, is the rationale for not "unsigning" this piece of trash that Clinton signed and left for Bush to deal with?