The Road From Kyoto

On March 24th, 2006 Science/AAAS published this article, written by Eli Kintisch and designed by Kelly Buckheit, that discusses the developments over the past 9 years and what the next 6 years hold for Kyoto ratifying countries and those who took a different path.

Global greenhouse gas emissions keep rising.

2006 marks a key year for climate policy around the world. Participants at a U.N.--sponsored meeting in Nairobi in November will debate what should happen after the 1997 Kyoto Treaty expires in 2012. Meanwhile, the 34 countries that have agreed to specific cuts under the accords are gearing up for 2008, when the enforcement clock starts ticking.

A number of nations have already moved to cut emissions. Emissions in Germany, for example, are down by nearly a fifth compared with 1990 levels. At the same time, emissions have risen substantially in Canada and Japan despite their promise to achieve a 6% reduction over 1990 levels. As a result, government officials in both nations are debating tough measures to reverse that trend.

The World Resource Institute has identified four factors that drove changes in a country's greenhouse gas emissions from 1990 to 2002. The numbers represent the relative contributions of each factor, and the contributions sum to the overall increase or decrease in that country's emissions. In the case of China, for example, 122% of its growth in emissions resulted from a per capita rise in GDP, while a shift in energy intensity reduced emissions growth by 96%.

In contrast, the United States and Australia, two major nonratifying nations, insist that long-term investment in technology and voluntary reductions are a better approach; their emissions have grown steadily since 1990. And developing nations not bound by Kyoto targets, in particular China and India, are beginning to emit carbon at absolute rates that match those of more industrialized nations.