Remember the Kyoto Treaty, signed in Kyoto, Japan in 1997 by 140 countries, including the United States. The treaty supposedly was designed to cut “greenhouse” emissions in select countries, including the US and Europe. Though President Clinton signed on to the treaty, he never submitted to the Senate for ratification. Why? Because while Clinton may have valued a photo opportunity, he also recognized that the Kyoto Treaty would have crippled the US economy, which would reflect poorly on him. When Bush took office in 2001, he made it clear that he too would not submit the treaty for ratification and furthermore, indicated that Kyoto was as good as dead in the eyes of the United States. Bush, however, called on the Kyoto signatories to join the US in discussions on a Kyoto alternative. The response from Europe and elsewhere was a collective silence. In that silence the true intentions of the Kyoto signatories becomes readily apparent.

Those who drafted and signed on to this agreement have (and had) no interest in reducing CO2 and other “greenhouse” emissions as they claim. We know this because two of the world’s top five polluters were not bound to the treaty at all. China and India, whose economies continue to expand at a rapid rate, are among the world’s largest polluters. How can any treaty with the stated aim of reducing emissions ignore two top five polluters? Further proof that this treaty was designed specifically to target the US is evident by the lack of interest in discussing Kyoto alternatives. If these countries were truly concerned with the environment then they would jump at the opportunity to develop strategies that would ease pollution. In reality, they were only interested in solutions of their own design, which would ensure a weakening of the US. Some countries, like France, have declared it as a matter of state policy to weaken the US.

Meanwhile, Chinese officials at the UN Climate conference in Montreal this week called the US and the Bush administration to task for not signing on to Kyoto (easy for them to say since they aren’t bound to it). One official, Sun Guoshunis, also stated that it was unfair to expect India and China, as developing nations to endure the same cuts as developed nations. Perhaps India can be considered a developing nation by some standards, but China is one of the 5 largest economies in the world eclipsing France, Britain and Germany and soon to eclipse Japan. China also has a large manufacturing base. For China to declare itself a developing nation at this stage in the game seems awfully convenient. Sun also noted that the US is the largest polluter and the largest polluter per capita. What Sun failed to note, however, is the fact that the US is the world’s largest economy and its share of global pollution is proportionate to its share of global economic and industrial output. China’s share, however, is disproportionate to its share of global output. What does this mean? It means that while the US is a major polluter, the US is also extremely efficient in use of resources, unlike China, whose waste contributes disproportionately to overall global pollution.
http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/science/11/30/climate.change.china.ap/index.html