Posted: 07/14/2005
How G-8 Killed Kyoto
Failure to Achieve Targets Also Helps Render Accord Ineffective
DALLAS (July 14, 2005) – The statement on global warming released at the conclusion of the G-8 Summit plus the failure of most signatory nations to achieve emissions targets effectively kills the Kyoto Protocol, according to NCPA Senior Fellow H. Sterling Burnett.
“The G-8 statement is a death warrant for Kyoto,” Dr. Burnett said. “The final Summit statement on global warming is an endorsement of long-standing U.S. policy – improve technology and transfer it to developing countries. Essentially, we live in a post-Kyoto world”
The Kyoto Protocol, adopted in 1997, requires signatory countries to lower carbon emissions by 2012, but Canada, most European Union countries and several other signatory nations are already announcing that it is unlikely they will meet their targets. Other countries, most notably India and China, where emissions are increasing rapidly, are exempt from energy cuts under the treaty. The Bush administration is already charting a post-Kyoto course. It has spent more than any other government to create and promote technologies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, including:
- $700 million in tax credits to promote clean technologies
- $3 billion in research on new clean technologies and
- $200 million to transfer of clean technology to developing countries.
The U.S. government also has taken the lead in carbon sequestration technologies. As a result, the oil and gas industry annually pumps tons of CO2 underground, removing it from the atmosphere and boosting yields from marginal oil and natural gas fields.
The Bush administration also crafted an international treaty for marketing methane, which will remove the equivalent of 33 million cars off the road by 2015, according to the Department of Energy. That’s equivalent to shutting down 50 coal-fired power plants or heating 7.2 million homes. The administration has also tripled funding for “Debt for Nature” tropical forest conservation programs to $40 million.
“We can now hope that these international leaders will heed science and follow the U.S. toward a post-Kyoto world in which technological innovation is the path to a sustainable future, not energy restrictions,” Burnett said.