US President Withdraws From UN Climate Treaty

via The Global Warming Policy Forum (GWPF)
http://www.thegwpf.com

The Guardian, 29 March 2001: The Bush administration yesterday appeared to end all hope of reviving the Kyoto treaty on global warming, declaring it had “no interest” in its implementation and taking the first steps towards withdrawing the US signature on the accord.

Kyoto’s death warrant, announced by Christine Todd Whitman, head of the environmental protection agency (EPA), represented a blunt rebuff to European hopes of establishing a global programme to slow down the emission of greenhouse gases, amid startling new evidence of rapid climate change. A UN panel of scientists assessing the threat recently reported that average temperatures could rise by up to 5.8 degrees celsius this century without a serious effort to curb emissions.

The former vice-president Al Gore signed the Kyoto accord on behalf of the US, but it was never ratified by the Senate. A state department official yesterday confirmed a report in the Washington Post that the new administration had asked the state department to explore ways of formally withdrawing the US signature from the document.

Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, privately told European ambassadors last week that the US considered the Kyoto accord “dead”, but the German chancellor, Gerhard Schröder, had hoped to convince Mr Bush not to abandon the agreement altogether when the two leaders meet today in Washington.

“It is important that the US accepts its responsibility for the world climate. They are the biggest economy in the world and the heaviest energy consumers,” Mr Schröder told the Los Angeles Times.