'Earth Hour' looks for public show of support for Kyoto Protocol U-turn
In December 1997, 37 industrialized nations entered into an agreement signed in Kyoto, Japan, to begin reducing carbon emissions into the Earth's atmosphere by five-percent increments beginning in 2005. Since that time, 181 nations and the European Union have ratified the Kyoto Accord. But the United States -- at the beginning, one of its driving forces, and still believed to be the world's principal emitter of carbon pollution -- never ratified or endorsed the treaty.
It was a fact cited frequently during the campaign of then-US Presidential candidate Joe Biden, now Vice President: After the US turned its back on Kyoto, in a manner that could not be construed as anything other than intentional and a vote against climate change measures, much of the rest of the world perceived the US' move as an implied endorsement of coal-burning plants. As described by Newsweek editor Fareed Zakaria in his 2008 book The Post-American World:
Demand for electricity is projected to rise over 4 percent a year for decades. And that electricity will come mostly from the dirtiest fuel available -- coal. Coal is cheap and plentiful, so the world relies on it to produce most of its electricity. To understand the impact on global warming, consider this fact: Between 2006 and 2012, China and India will build eight hundred new coal-fired power plants -- with combined CO2 emissions five times the total savings of the Kyoto accords...
The Kyoto accord (now treated as sacred because of President Bush's cavalier rejection of [it]) is in fact a treaty marked by its adherence to the old worldview. Kyoto assumed that if the West came together and settled on a plan, the Third World would adopt the new framework and the problem would be solved. That may be the way things have been done in international affairs for decades, but it makes little sense today. China, India, Brazil, and other emerging powers will not follow along with a Western-led process in which they have not participated. What's more, governments on their own can do only so much to tackle a problem like climate change. A real solution requires creating a much broader coalition that includes the private sector, nongovernmental groups, cities and localities, and the media. In a globalized, democratized, and decentralized world, we need to get to individuals to alter their behavior.
In an effort to visibly show that at least the raw materials for such a coalition do exist in the United States and around the world, the World Wildlife Fund is encouraging individuals to shut off their electric light switches for one hour tomorrow -- Saturday, March 28 -- between 8:30 and 9:30 pm local time. Supporters of the effort are encouraging individuals to also shut off their PCs, TVs, and other entertainment devices for that hour, creating an interval during which individuals may not only alter their behavior but become compelled to speak to one another.
"Unlike any election in history, it is not about what country you're from, but instead, what planet you're from," reads the WWF's Web site for the Earth Hour project. "VOTE EARTH is a global call to action for every individual, every business, and every community. A call to stand up and take control over the future of our planet. Over 74 countries and territories have pledged their support to VOTE EARTH during Earth Hour 2009, and this number is growing every day."
The reason tomorrow will be such an important day is because it's the day the United States returns to the bargaining table in climate change negotiations brokered by the UN, for the first time since Kyoto. Representing the US at that meeting will be the State Dept.'s newly appointed Special Envoy on Climate Change, Todd Stern.
During a press conference in Berlin earlier today, according to the Associated Press, Stern didn't hold back any feelings at all with regard to the US' position on Kyoto: "We do not have any interest in the United States in having a repeat of the Kyoto experience," remarked Stern, "where we signed an agreement that is dead on arrival when we brought it back home. We need to be guided on this internationally by a combination of science and pragmatism. It does not serve anyone to do a week-kneed compromise that doesn't move us in the direction that the science is telling us we need to go. By the same token, it doesn't serve anybody to have an agreement that is scientifically pristine and perfect and which cannot be supported by our public back home."