   • Home   • Back Issues   • Search    The Kyoto Placebo
Global warming is a stealth issue in U.S. foreign policy. Even
as the effects of mounting carbon dioxide (CO2) begin to make
themselves felt, and huge multinationals such as General
Electric and Shell announce their own plans of action, the U.S.
government still acts as if there is no urgency to the task of
cutting CO2 emissions. The moment will shortly be upon us when a
solution is needed, fast.  Advocates for action and the 157
ratifying countries (including the European Community) of the
1997 Protocol to the United Nations (UN) Framework Convention on
Climate Change, negotiated in Kyoto, console themselves with the
thought that at least the Kyoto Protocol has set in place the
building blocks of a workable plan for combating the certainty
of global warming, in the form of emission targets coupled with
international emissions trading. It sets a timetable for capping
and then gradually reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions; the
developed countries h