Next month, world leaders will gather in Bali, Indonesia, for a summit aimed at creating a framework for a successor to the Kyoto protocol. Among the U.S. politicians who will be in attendance are Senators John Kerry and Barbara Boxer, who also chairs the Senate Environment Committee. Whether or not Kerry and Boxer decide to support a Kyoto-style agreement this time (after both of them opposed the original Kyoto Protocol) remains to be seen.
I would encourage the Senators, however, to not spend so much time trying to score political points against the Bush administration (which will likely oppose such an arrangement) that they forget about the Lieberman-Warner bill, which is currently being reviewed by Boxer’s own committee.
Kyoto failed for two reasons: 1) It didn’t include China and India, two of the largest producers of greenhouse gases; and 2) Many of the countries that did sign on didn’t meet their reduction targets – in some cases, they didn’t even come close. It is unlikely that either of these problems will be solved by a new agreement, at least not in the short-term.
So let’s go to Bali, and see what happens – there’s no harm in discussing this issue with other world leaders. But don’t forget about the potential solution that’s staring us in the face here at home: the Lieberman-Warner cap-and-trade bill.
This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 20th, 2007 at 12:15 pm and is filed under Cap and Trade, International Environmental News, Politics/Government . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
