December 25, 2006
Negotiations on the Kyoto Protocol to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) (click here) were completed December 11, 1997, committing the industrialized nations to specified, legally binding reductions in emissions of six “greenhouse gases.” The Protocol entered into force on February 16, 2005, and its emissions reduction requirements are binding on the 35 industrialized countries that have ratified it; the United States disengaged from the Protocol in 2001 and has not ratified it.
As structured in the negotiations completed in 1997, this treaty would commit the United States — if it were to ratify the Protocol — to a target of reducing greenhouse gases by 7% below 1990 levels during a “commitment period” between 2008-2012. Because of the fact that “sinks,” which remove and store carbon from the atmosphere, are counted and because of other provisions discussed in this report, the actual reduction of emissions within the United States that would be required to meet the target was estimated to be lower than 7%.
The United States signed the Protocol on November 12, 1998. However, the Clinton Administration did not submit the Protocol to the Senate for advice and consent, acknowledging that one condition outlined by S.Res. 98, passed in mid-1997 — meaningful participation by developing countries in binding commitments limiting greenhouse gases — had not been met. In late March 2001, the Bush Administration rejected the Kyoto Protocol. The United States continued to attend the annual conferences of the parties (COPs) to the UNFCCC, but did not participate in Kyoto Protocol-related negotiations. In February, 2002, President Bush announced a U.S. policy for climate change that will rely on domestic, voluntary actions to reduce the “greenhouse gas intensity” (ratio of emissions to economic output) of the U.S. economy by 18% over the next 10 years.
The protocol was ratified only after Russia agreed to it.
Following the ratification of the Kyoto Protocol by Russia in November 2004, it entered into force on February 16, 2005,...
