How can the U.S sign the Kyoto accord?

Question

I don't care if your for it or against it..It needs to be signed for the purpose of my debate..

Answer 1

This could be a political problem. Americans do not want to have any reduction in living standards, regardless of the benefits to that far off planet called earth, where, after all most of the inhabitants are not  Americans.The benefits of saving the planet would come more to America's enemies (of which there are many) than to Americans.

Kyoto protocol does not of course require that any country buy carbon credits. It never did.

If a country can cut its emissions it may even be able to sell some credits. Even within the USA, people could be buying and selling credits with no international trade.

However, if the USA were to buy into Kyoto with  earlier rules in play, and then discover that Europe is pushing for an 80% reduction in emissions (from 1990 levels) USA would just back off and say they had no idea this was in the works in Kyoto.

No way would USA agree to base Kyoto emission quotas on population. That kind of democracy just does not work for the USA.

Answer 2

Politics and so-called caring people.

Answer 3

our government does what it wants to, no matter whether its right or wrong.

Answer 4

The president needs to agree with the treaty and sign it.  Also it must be ratified by two-thirds of the US Senate.

Answer 5

"On July 25, 1997, before the Kyoto Protocol was finalized (although it had been fully negotiated, and a penultimate draft was finished), the U.S. Senate unanimously passed by a 95–0 vote the Byrd-Hagel Resolution (S. Res. 98),[63][64] which stated the sense of the Senate was that the United States should not be a signatory to any protocol that did not include binding targets and timetables for developing as well as industrialized nations or "would result in serious harm to the economy of the United States".  The Clinton Administration never submitted the protocol to the Senate for ratification."

Got that? Shot down 95-0 during the CLINTON administration!

Answer 6

Signing the kyoto accord would be saying we will let other countries dictate what we can do in our own country.  That would not benefit anybody.  The U.S. already has the cleanest burning cars and industry of any country in the world.

Answer 7

The Kyoto Protocol makes nonsensical exemptions, thus it doesn't actually address global warming from a serious standpoint.

"The Kyoto Protocol restricts nations based on how wealthy they are, not based on how much greenhouse gas they produce! The United States would have had to adopt economy-strangling restrictions, while China, which will surpass the United States as the world's largest producer of greenhouse gases by 2010 at the speed at which an IndyCar passes a hobo pushing a shopping basket, remains exempt from any restrictions. India, the world's third largest producer of greenhouse gases, is also exempt. Even Al Gore says that 30% of global CO2 emissions come from forest burning in the exempt third world nations. That's a pretty big chunk that nobody seems to talk much about.

"Some interpretations have said that without additional controls on the exempt nations, the Kyoto Protocol would result in eventual increases in the total greenhouse gas output. By these interpretations, the Kyoto Protocol is merely a symbolic political statement and not a useful tool for reducing greenhouse gases... Blanket proclamations like the Kyoto Protocol are not the way to approach the problem with any workable practicality. In fact, 13 of the 15 European nations who did ratify Kyoto have been unable to comply with its requirements.

"There is a way to find out what we can actually achieve through the reduction of greenhouse gases, and thus know how much of a reduction we need to make, plan a way to pay for it and actually make it happen: Doing more science and learning more about our planet. And we're already doing that. More climatologists are working on the problem than ever before."

The issue isn't that the U.S. is being stubborn and is unwilling to sacrifice. The issue is the unbalanced cost-benefit of Kyoto.

Answer 8

They shouldn't.  What's needed is a new treaty, one that better involves ALL nations.

Given the ever more certain science of global warming, that can be done.

Answer 9

As long as China and India do, so we don't have to pay carbon credits to shore up their industries.

And as long as the Kyoto Accord doesn't interfere with our developing technologies and way of life.