Climate treaty faces cold reception in Congress

Nation's Business, Feb, 1998 by Stephen Blakely

The controversial treaty on stemming global warming that emerged from international negotiations in Japan late last year faces a cloudy future in the U.S. Congress.

American business and labor leaders widely attacked the global-warming pact Dec. 11, the day the Clinton administration agreed to accept it. They described the so-called Kyoto Protocol on climate change as "unilateral economic disarmament" for the United States and vowed to block its ratification by the Senate, which the Constitution requires for U.S. approval of international treaties.

"It is a terrible deal ... and we will campaign hard and we will defeat it," vowed William F. O'Keefe, chairman of the Washington-based Global Climate Coalition (GCC), after the protocol was approved by international delegates. The GCC represents U.S. business and industry on the global-warming issue.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, a member of the GCC, urged Congress to reject the treaty because it would stifle U. S. economic growth and eliminate jobs. "The American people and its Congress are too smart to buy this prescription for economic suicide," said Chamber President and CEO Thomas J. Donohue.

Vice President Al Gore, who has championed the global-warming treaty and who directed U.S. negotiations at Kyoto, acknowledges that the administration has an uphill fight in Congress. The Senate last year adopted 95-0 a resolution opposing any global-warming agreement that applies exclusively to developed nations -- a key element of the final Kyoto Protocol.

Among other things, the global-warming treaty would require the 38 major industrialized nations to reduce emissions of the six so-called greenhouse gases -- primarily carbon dioxide -- blamed for global warming. Greenhouse gases are produced mainly by the burning of fossil fuels such as coal and oil.

Collectively, the developed nations would have to cut these emissions by 5 percent between 2008 and 2012, with Europe, the United States, and Japan making the biggest reductions.

Developing nations that are also major sources of greenhouse gases, such as China and India, were asked to set voluntary reduction targets. Future meeting of the treaty parties will be held appropriate and effective ways to enforce the global-warming agreement.

For all the controversy over the global-warming treaty, it is unclear when congressional opponents will get a chance to vote against it. Gore has said the treaty will not be submitted to the Senate for ratification until some developing nations, notably China or India, agree to participate in it. That would not occur at least until the next international summit on global warming, slated to be held in Argentina late this year.