Can the Kyoto Protocol work if the developing countries don participate?
• Opponents of the treaty in the US have repeatedly insisted it “won t work” if developing countries “don t participate.” This assertion is based on a distortion of the Framework Convention and ignores the prior agreements that led to the Kyoto Protocol. • All nations that signed the Convention must inventory their domestic emissions, create pilot programs to limit them, and participate in the international efforts to reduce global emissions. • In 1996 it became clear that the 1992 agreement to reduce greenhouse emissions wasn t working. That year in Berlin, all parties, including the US, accepted the principle that agreeing to binding reduction targets for the industrialized nations should come first, and then limiting emissions from the developing nations would follow. • US per capita energy use is about twice that of Western Europe and Japan, 12 times that of China, and 20 times that of India. Since 1990, China’s and India’s emissions remained about the same while US emissions incre