Bush Was Right to Reject Kyoto 'Fiasco'

George Bush suffered heavy international criticism for rejecting the Kyoto Protocol, but it now appears he was exactly right: The treaty is a "fiasco,� Forbes magazine declares.

The treaty was negotiated in 1997 as a way to slow global warming, and formally took effect in February, without U.S. participation.

The Clinton administration agreed to the protocol, but the Senate refused to ratify it, in part because developing countries that were major polluters and trade competitors, particularly China and India, refused to participate in the Kyoto accord.

So right now "Kyoto is essentially a western European proposition,� Forbes reports.

But "China and India together send more tons of carbon into the atmosphere than all of western Europe combined, and the U.S. accounts for more than China and India together.�
Therefore it has become "painfully obvious that the treaty was a fiasco,� Dan Seligman writes in Forbes.

Even Britain�s Tony Blair, a supporter of the protocol, seemed to admit defeat for the treaty when in a recent speech at the Clinton Global Initiative in New York, he conceded: "No country is going to cut growth� � which is the only known way to cut emissions, according to Forbes.

Ironically, even western Europe is not reducing emissions. According to the protocol, western European nations must reduce their emissions to levels 8 percent lower than those of 1990. But in the years since the treaty was negotiated, carbon dioxide levels increased by 7 percent in France, 11 percent in Italy and 29 percent in Spain. Overall, the increase for western Europe was 5.4 percent.

"After many years of European chatter about the monstrous evil perpetrated by George W. Bush in rejecting Kyoto,� Forbes concludes, "it is of possible interest that the increase in carbon emissions in the U.S. during those years was slightly lower (4.7 percent).�