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[tvoivozd AT roanoke.infi.net]

The article below from NYTimes.com 
has been sent to you by tvoivozd AT roanoke.infi.net.


The Too-Late, Too Little or Never-Never-Never-Guy in the White House is 
displacing and killing millions of people around the world, including people 
in the U.S.

And inflicting irreparable annual economic losses of trillions of dollars on 
the same victims.

Don't worry, Deficits don't count according to the Cheney-Bush Mantra.



tvoivozd AT roanoke.infi.net


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With Russia's Nod, Treaty on Emissions Clears Last Hurdle

October 1, 2004
 By SETH MYDANS and ANDREW C. REVKIN 



 

MOSCOW, Sept. 30 - The long-delayed Kyoto Protocol on
global warming overcame its last critical hurdle to taking
effect around the world on Thursday when Russia's cabinet
endorsed the treaty and sent it to Parliament. The treaty,
the first to require cuts in emissions linked to global
warming, would take effect 90 days after Parliament's
approval, a formality that was widely expected. 

The United States has rejected the treaty and will not be
bound by its restrictions. But the treaty, which has
already been ratified by 120 countries will take effect if
supporters include nations accounting for at least 55
percent of all industrialized countries' 1990-level
emissions. The only way for it to cross that threshold was
with ratification by Russia. In 1990, the United States
accounted for 36.1 percent of emissions from industrialized
countries, and Russia 17.4 percent. 

The protocol was dormant over the last two years as Russia
considered its merits and sought concessions from the
European Union, the treaty's main proponent. 

The treaty is widely considered a milestone of
international environmental diplomacy. It is the first
agreement that sets binding restrictions on emissions of
heat-trapping gases that, for now, remain an unavoidable
result of almost any facet of modern life, including
driving a car and running a power plant. The main source of
the dominant gas, carbon dioxide, is burning coal and oil. 

But many specialists say that, at the same time, the
protocol is just the tiniest initial step toward limiting
the human influence on the climate, given that its targets
are small and that the United States will not be bound by
its terms. China, a major polluter that did sign the
treaty, is not bound by its restrictions because it is
considered a developing country. 

The treaty would require 36 industrialized countries to
reduce their collective emissions of six greenhouse gases
by 2012 to more than five percent below 1990 levels, with
different targets negotiated for individual countries. 

By one calculation, it would take more than 40 times the
emissions reductions required under the treaty to prevent a
doubling of the pre-industrial concentration of carbon
dioxide in the atmosphere in this century. 

Still, the decision by the government of President Vladimir
V. Putin to endorse the treaty was "cause for celebration,"
said Klaus Toepfer, the executive director of the United
Nations Environment Program. 

He acknowledged that the Kyoto accord was "only the first
step in a long journey towards stabilizing greenhouse gas
emissions." But Mr. Toepfer added that Russia's move sent a
vital signal to developing countries, which supported the
treaty only if it excused them from reductions, and the
small number of wealthy nations that still oppose curbs on
the gases that cause global warming, most notably the
United States. 

"I hope other nations, some of whom, like Russia, have
maybe been in the past reluctant to ratify, will now join
us in this truly global endeavor," he said. 

In Washington, Harlan L. Watson, the chief State Department
negotiator on climate issues, said Russia's decision would
not change the Bush administration's rejection of the
treaty. Mr. Watson said the United States would continue to
focus on long-term research to find new nonpolluting
sources of energy or ways to limit the buildup of carbon
dioxide. 

A spokesman for Senator John Kerry, the Democratic
presidential candidate, who has criticized the Bush
administration's position on global warming, was quick to
seize on Russia's decision. "George Bush made a
catastrophic mistake when he declared a decade's work of
160 nations dead on arrival instead of working with our
allies to fix the treaty and lead on global warming,'' said
the spokesman, David Wade. "We're still paying a heavy
price for his unilateralism." 

One more step is required in Russia for the pact to take
effect - approval by the Parliament, or Duma. But the body
is dominated by supporters of Mr. Putin, so approval is
expected, even though Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov
predicted a "difficult debate." The treaty would take
effect 90 days after the Duma approval. 

Mr. Putin made no public statement on Thursday. His top
economic adviser, Andrei Illarionov, who had opposed the
pact, said that the decision to endorse it had been made
for political reasons and that the task now would be to try
to minimize what he called the treaty's negative
consequences for Russia. 

He said compliance would slow Russia's economic growth and
make it impossible to meet Mr. Putin's stated goal of
doubling the gross domestic product within a decade. 

"It's not a decision we are making with pleasure," Mr.
Illarionov said, the Interfax news agency reported. 

The European Union had pressed Russia for more than a year
to accept the pact. In Brussels, Romano Prodi, the
president of the European Commission, said "President Putin
has sent a strong signal of his commitment and sense of
responsibility." 

Mr. Illarionov had said the treaty was based on false and
even deceptive scientific assumptions. 

His views conflict with a broad international scientific
consensus that the buildup of long-lived gases, which act
like the panes in a greenhouse roof, is likely to disrupt
weather patterns and water supplies and threaten coasts by
raising sea levels. 

German Gref, Russia's economic development minister, called
the treaty "a progressive step" but said, "It will hardly
be decisive in radically improving the environmental
situation." 

Breaking with Mr. Illarionov, Mr. Gref added that the
treaty was unlikely to undermine Russia's economic growth. 

In Washington, some lobbyists for American industries
opposed to the treaty suggested there was a chance that Mr.
Putin still opposed it and was planning for Parliament to
reject it - as proof that he was not consolidating power. 

But in Moscow, the mood among environmental activists was
cautiously upbeat. 

Vladimir Azkharov, director of the Center for Russian
Environmental Policy, a lobbying group, said the treaty
"very, very probably" would be approved in parliament,
although he said, "there is no guarantee." 

President Bush summarily rejected the treaty in 2001,
saying it would burden the economy by limiting use of
fossil fuels and would unfairly exclude big developing
countries from curbs on emissions. The Senate had long ago
signaled its opposition for the same reasons. 

China and other developing countries, while signing the
treaty, only did so because it obligated established
industrial powers to act first. 

Last December, in what seemed a definitive rejection, Mr.
Illarionov said Russia would not sign the treaty. In May,
however, Mr. Putin promised to speed ratification, in a
move widely interpreted as a concession to gain support
from the European Union for Russia's bid to join the World
Trade Organization. International environmental groups
expressed satisfaction at the news. 

"As the Earth is battered by increasing storms, floods and
droughts, President Putin has brought us to a pivotal point
in human history," Steve Sawyer, a climate campaigner for
Greenpeace International, said. "The Bush administration is
out in the cold and the rest of the world can move
forward." 

In a telephone interview, Fred Krupp, the president of
Environmental Defense, said, "What is significant is that
it will be a market signal heard around the world, a signal
that we are moving into a carbon-constrained future." 

The treaty, named for the Japanese city of Kyoto where it
was negotiated in 1997, is an outgrowth of a 1992 pact, the
United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, that
was signed by Mr. Bush's father and under which countries
agreed to strive to bring their emissions of the gases to
1990 levels by 2000. 

By the mid-1990s, however, it was clear that the targets
would not be met, leading to a new round of talks toward a
binding protocol with firm targets and penalties. 

Its basic architecture and targets were hastily negotiated
in December 1997 in Kyoto. But momentum was lost after Mr.
Bush rejected it and after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. 

Some of its biggest weaknesses now stem from the long
delays. Subsequent economic activity and rising emissions
have threatened to put Europe and Japan, its main backers,
out of compliance. 

The treaty provides various strategies through which
countries can reach their targets without actually reducing
emissions at home. Investments can be made in poor
countries to save forests, which absorb carbon dioxide, or
introduce efficient technologies, which use less fuel. 

It permits emissions trading, in which one country buys the
right to emit from another that has already exceeded its
targets for reducing emissions and has extra credits. 

Prof. David G. Victor, a political scientist at Stanford
and longtime student of the protocol, said Russia had
nothing to lose by moving ahead, since it surpassed its
Kyoto targets before they were set. 

After the Russian economy collapsed with the fall of
Communism, the country's greenhouse gas emissions fell far
below 1990 levels, leaving it with a bonanza of tradable
credits earned when it surpassed its targets for reducing
emissions. For Europe this bundle of credits is a mixed
blessing now, Mr. Victor said. 

The European Union recently passed legislation creating an
internal trading market under the protocol's terms, so that
richer member states, like Britain, could get credit toward
targets by investing in emissions-cutting projects in
poorer, more polluted, ones, like Spain. But under the
treaty's terms, Europe, Japan, and other industrialized
participants can buy credits from Russia as well. If Russia
now starts selling its credits to Europe, there will be
little incentive for companies within the European Union to
push ahead with plans to cut emissions that would be more
costly, Mr. Victor said. 

Seth Mydans reported from Moscow for this article, and
Andrew C.Revkin from Washington. 

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/01/international/europe/01russia.html?ex=1097652258&ei=1&en=e282bff27e5f59d8


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