Why didn the United States and Australia ratify Kyoto?
U.S. President George W. Bush refused to ratify Kyoto because he thought it would damage the U.S. economy and that it gave an unfair advantage to developing countries. “Australia is the world’s biggest coal exporter. For us to ratify the protocol would cost us jobs and damage our industry,” Prime Minister John Howard told his country’s parliament in 2002. Howard also thought that the accord was too soft on developing countries. The U.S. Natural Resources Defence Council said that the average American uses more electricity in two weeks than an average person in India uses in a year.
