The Pros And Cons Of The United States Joining The Kyoto Protocol

With the United States joining the Kyoto Protocol in the late 1990s, many viewed this as the perfect opportunity to for the U.S. to join the global effort in mitigating climate change. However, when President George W. Bush took office, many felt that the protocol was weak and ineffective for a few different reasons. First, developing countries were excluded from the Kyoto Protocol. From the point of view of developing countries, the United States had a double standard to them. Hence, the U.S. wanted to take part in the global effort to mitigate climate change, yet at the same time they were one of the top greenhouse gas emitters in the world. With the U.S. being one of the world’s wealthiest nations, we have built fortunes and long term economic stability on

How did we expect developing countries to join the Kyoto Protocol, when we ourselves were emitting around ten times as much greenhouse gas emissions? Being one of the top polluters in the world means that the U.S. should take responsibility for their GHG. Without the U.S. taking full responsibility, developing countries were even less motivated to join the protocol. Considering this, the only possible way to convince developing countries to join the regime would be by offering very strong incentives. On another note, the protocol was weak since there was a link of linkages between the scientific base and policy. Without any certainty regarding climate change itself and how scientifically the Kyoto targets were settled, is a point of controversy. One would assume that a policy regarding climate change would be based off of scientific evidence and data. This however wasn’t the case with the Kyoto Protocol. The emissions target in the protocol were being based off of political negotiations, rather than science. With the targets having no relation to scientific information, long term objectives will be hard to