Kyoto Protocol

After months of national debate, Canada's House of Commons voted in favor of ratifying the Kyoto Protocol to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The 195-77 vote gave Prime Minister Jean Chretien the public endorsement he wanted for the government to announce ratification by year's end. Canada's ratification will be a major boost for the treaty, rejected by President Bush. Meanwhile, New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark officially ratified the treaty, which more than 80 nations have signed.

Sen. John Kerry, President Obama's nominee for secretary of State, may not be able to bring peace to the Middle East, end enduring trade and currency disputes with China or mend fences with all the anti-American leaders in Latin America. But he may be capable of redirecting the debate over an issue of equal or greater importance: climate change. Kerry is among the most forward-thinking members of the U.S. Senate when it comes to understanding both the threats of and the practical responses to global warming.

Canada ratified the Kyoto Protocol, leaving the fate of the 1997 treaty on reducing greenhouse gases up to Russia. To take effect, the pact must be ratified by at least 55 countries, including those responsible for 55% of the world's emissions in 1990. While nearly 100 countries have ratified it, the rejection of the treaty by the U.S. -- responsible for 36.1% of emissions in 1990 -- means nearly every other industrial country must sign for the pact to take effect. Russia, responsible for 17.

COPENHAGEN, Denmark, December 10, 2009 - The Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) on Thursday announced a proposal designed to safeguard the Earth's climate system and to secure the future survival of its 43 members. "AOSIS members are at the front line of the devastating impacts of climate change. Today we have put forward a proposal for a legally binding agreement to secure the twin objectives of survival of the Kyoto Protocol and to strengthen the UNFCCC with a new 'Copenhagen' Protocol that can be adopted here in Copenhagen", said Ambassador Dessima Williams of Grenada.

The upper house of Russia's parliament ratified the Kyoto Protocol and sent it on to President Vladimir V. Putin for his signature -- setting the stage for the global climate treaty to come into force next year. Putin's stamp of approval is considered a formality, but the Kremlin has given no indication of when he will sign the pact, which seeks to slow global warming by reducing greenhouse-gas emissions. The pact will apply only to nations that ratify it, a group that does not include the U.S.

Sen. John Kerry, President Obama's nominee for secretary of State, may not be able to bring peace to the Middle East, end enduring trade and currency disputes with China or mend fences with all the anti-American leaders in Latin America. But he may be capable of redirecting the debate over an issue of equal or greater importance: climate change. Kerry is among the most forward-thinking members of the U.S. Senate when it comes to understanding both the threats of and the practical responses to global warming.

Councilman Bill Rosendahl on Wednesday proposed the city join other municipalities that have agreed to limit their release of greenhouse gases under the Kyoto Protocol. The treaty went into effect last year with 141 nations as signatories but not the United States. In response, the U.S. Conference of Mayors -- led by Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels -- agreed to similar reductions.

One day last month in this normally sun-starved corner of the country, when the temperature reached into the low 60s, residents donned shorts and acted as if summer had come early. That bothered Mayor Greg Nickels -- not the shorts, but the warm weather. The temperature hit the 60s again this month, and with mountain snowpacks alarmingly low and scientists already predicting drought this summer, Nickels said he feared "the profound changes" associated with global warming had reached home.

The Russian Cabinet gave its approval to the Kyoto Protocol on Thursday in the strongest sign yet that the treaty to fight global warming would win enough worldwide support to come into force. The Duma, the lower house of parliament, has yet to give its backing and President Vladimir V. Putin his signature before Russia can ratify the treaty, but those actions are widely expected. It is now "99% certain" that the Kyoto Protocol will come into effect, said Alexei O.

With an international pact to fight global warming suddenly said to be within reach, environmentalists and politicians Saturday praised the power of solidarity in their efforts to reduce so-called greenhouse gases--even if the biggest producer, the United States, won't. Delegates and observers acknowledged that a deal to rescue the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which would apportion emission reductions to industrialized nations, is still far from guaranteed.

President Obama will attend the international climate negotiations in Copenhagen next month, according to a senior administration official, a sign of the president's increasing confidence that the talks will yield a meaningful agreement to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions. The White House also will announce today that the United States will commit, in the talks, to reduce its emissions of the heat-trapping gases scientists blame for global warming "in the range of" 17% below 2005 levels by 2020, the official said.

When Greg Nickels became Seattle's mayor in 2002, global warming was hardly at the top of the municipal agenda. New York's World Trade Center had been attacked, and officials had to figure out how to protect their own city from terrorism. Boeing was laying off 30,000 machinists, so there was the declining regional economy to deal with. Surely the federal government would worry about climate change. Then came the winter of 2004, when the Cascade Mountains snowpack was so disastrously low that ski resorts -- facing their worst year on record -- laid off most of their employees.

Adozen years ago, most of the countries of the world signed on to an unwieldy attempt to reduce greenhouse gases known as the Kyoto Protocol, which the U.S. Congress declined to ratify.

Re "Cap-and-trade rules," editorial, Oct. 1 Your editorial regarding using markets to reduce greenhouse emissions was right, in that the state does need to develop well-designed markets. But the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power has estimated that the so-called auctions program championed in the editorial would increase electricity costs by $700 million for its customers. Further, the auctions system would impose billions of dollars in hidden taxes on California's existing businesses, which could drive jobs and business out of the state.

In the Kyoto Protocol's accounting of greenhouse gases, the former Eastern bloc is a smashing success. Russia: Down 29% in carbon dioxide emissions since 1990. Romania: A 43% reduction. Latvia: A resounding 60% drop. Reductions such as those across Eastern Europe were the main reason the United Nations was recently able to report a 12% drop in emissions from the accord's industrialized countries over the 1990-2005 period. It was an illusion.

The Los Angeles Planning Commission on Thursday approved one of the most ambitious green building programs of any big city in the nation, requiring large new developments to be 15% more energy efficient. The new rules, which also restrict water use, aim to cut the city's emissions of greenhouse gases that are responsible for global warming. Cities have no power over vehicle tailpipe emissions, which are ultimately controlled by the federal government.

In a display of international cohesion and commitment, negotiators from more than 180 nations Monday adopted the much-maligned Kyoto Protocol aimed at fighting global warming and protecting the planet from mankind's wasteful ways. The overwhelming endorsement at a watershed session of the U.N. Convention on Climate Change was celebrated by negotiators and environmentalists as a crucial first step toward reducing "greenhouse gases" despite President Bush's rejection of the accord.

America's mayors, responding to a growing sense of urgency over climate change, are rapidly stepping up programs to weatherize buildings, capture methane gas from landfills, switch municipal fleets to hybrids, promote mass transit and buy cleaner electricity. But changing the carbon footprint of their cities is turning out to be harder than they thought.

AS PRESIDENT BUSH sat across the table last week from European leaders steamed about his approach to global warming, he could at least bask in the knowledge that even though the compromise he engineered isn't exactly the right thing to do, it's less wrong than usual. Bush, the former Texas oilman who is as beloved by environmentalists as Nero was by Christians, has been under pressure from a Democratic Congress and fellow world leaders in the Group of 8 to change course on climate change.