01/31/08: US Doing Better Than its Kyoto Critics on CO2, Expert Says

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US Doing Better Than its Kyoto Critics on CO2, Expert Says

By Kevin Mooney

CNSNews.com Staff Writer

February 16, 2007

(CNSNews.com) - Contrary to the widely held view, the United States is not "going it alone" in resisting the Kyoto Protocol's "energy rationing scheme," according to an expert on global warming treaties.

Washington's reticence is shared by policymakers in 150 other nations, representing a majority of the world's population, Christopher Horner, a senior fellow with the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) said Thursday.

Moreover, the same European critics who accuse the U.S. of unilateralism have failed to meet their own Kyoto targets, Horner told a meeting at the Heritage Foundation.

The 1997 Kyoto treaty requires signatory nations to set limits on the emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) and other "greenhouse gases" blamed for climate change, by an average of five percent by 2012.

The 15 European nations participating at the time - the so-called E.U.-15 - made a commitment to collectively reduce their emissions to the point where they would be eight percent lower than 1990 levels.

Since the treaty went into effect, however, Europe's CO2 emissions have increased quite substantially - and at a rate three times faster than America's - Horner said. At the same time, Kyoto-related regulations have led to higher energy costs for E.U.-15 citizens.

Although these statistics are not a secret, Europe continues to "fudge" its baseline in an effort to confuse the debate and score political points at the expense of the U.S., Horner charges in a new book, "The Politically Incorrect Guide to Global Warming and Environmentalism."

The Kyoto Treaty has become a "wonderful vehicle" for opponents of the Bush administration's foreign policy, Horner said during his talk.

"The anger, the vitriol, the fury is about Bush," he said. "You will find this problem largely goes away when he leaves office."

In his book, Horner argues that the U.S. position on Kyoto is shared by 155 countries, but critics go unchallenged in part because of the media's failure to report key facts.

The history surrounding the Kyoto treaty is also misunderstood.

Horner pointed out that among a list of grievances included in Osama Bin Laden' s 2002 statement entitled "Letter to the American People" was the following: "You have destroyed nature with your industrial waste and gases more than any other nation in history. Despite this, you refuse to sign the Kyoto agreement so that you can secure the profit of your greedy companies and industries."

Horner said it was not accurate to say the U.S. refused to sign. President Clinton did sign the Kyoto Protocol. It has not been ratified, but the U.S. has also not formally withdrawn from it.

"Despite sloppy reportage to the contrary, President Bush has never refused to sign Kyoto. He never had the option - it was already signed," Horner writes in his book.

While acknowledging the rhetorical differences between Clinton and Bush on Kyoto, Horner contends there is little to distinguish between how the two presidents have handled the treaty, since neither has pushed for Senate ratification.

In his book, Horner also tackles the notion of "scientific consensus" on climate change.

He told audience members there are "two sides" to the global warming debate and both should be heard. An effort was underway to silence voices who question the scientific evidence for human-induced global warming.

The proponents of consensus often invoke the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). However, the most recent scientific data from the IPCC backs away from the more dire projections previously made about sea-level rise and climate change, Horner observed.

Unfortunately, most politicians and reporters only reference the summary statement attached to the IPCC report without perusing the scientific data, he said.

The summary does not always correspond with the scientific data, yet it is frequently cited to bolster the arguments in favor of consensus, he argued.

Ironically, a "speech code" now in place would in the 1970s have sidelined advocates of global warming theories from engaging in scientific debate, because at the time there was a "consensus" on global cooling, Horner said.

Horner is a lawyer based in Washington, D.C., and a senior fellow at the CEI. He oversees litigation on topics involving environmental and energy issues and international environmental treaties.

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