President Right to Balk At Bad Kyoto Treaty

Editor:

President Bush acted very responsibly when he announced that the United States would not ratify the Kyoto Protocol. The facts behind his decision include the following:

In July 1997, the U.S. Senate (by a vote of 95-0) told then-President Clinton not to sign the Kyoto Protocol unless the “developed” and “developing” countries were treated equally.

There are 34 developed countries including the U.S., Canada, European countries and Japan. The rest of the world comprises 132 developing countries. The developed countries must reduce CO2 emissions, which come from burning fossil fuels. The developing countries such as China, India, Brazil and Mexico still have no such restrictions.

Romania is the only “developed” country that has ratified the Kyoto Protocol in the three years since it was first signed. Thirty-three developing countries have also ratified it, but without any commitment.

The AFL-CIO Executive Council, in their Jan. 30, 1998 statement entitled “The Kyoto Protocol,” called on President Clinton to refrain from signing the Kyoto Protocol because it was unfair to the United States. A study released by the Clinton administration showed job losses of 900,000 U.S. workers by 2005. Other studies showed job losses of up to 1.5 million workers.

Implementing the Kyoto Protocol will assure the entire United States of high electricity and gasoline prices and blackouts, exactly the situation in California. Do we want that?

A 1998 study by the Clinton administration’s United States Energy Information Administration, at the request of Congress, gave the cost of implementing the Kyoto Protocol in the United States at over $350 billion per year.

President Clinton had the protocol signed in November 1998 and did nothing about it, thus leaving another problem for his successor to solve.

President Bush correctly announced that the United States would not ratify the Kyoto Protocol. He also said that the U.S. would work to solve the global warming problem and has recently spoken with Japan’s Prime Minister Koizumi about solutions.

Those who insist we ratify the current protocol, particularly since no other industrialized country has done so, are apparently unaware of the great economic and unemployment consequences to the citizens of our country.

For more information, call Citizens for a Sound Economy at (561) 266-8876.

Thomas B. Hauck

Palm City