Dear Source:
It's difficult to catalog all the factual errors in Mr. Larsen's rambling missive to the Source on global warming/windmills/American greed. But I'll take a wag at it.
Let's start with the statement, "As the biggest polluter in the World US is finally taking some responsibility for the damage done to Mother Earth. Totally isolated, as the only country in the World refusing to rectify [sic] the Kyoto Protocol, United States really had no choice."
Fortunately for Americans, the US did and does have a choice with regards to Kyoto. In America, all treaties must be ratified by the US Senate. In 1997, the US Senate voted 95-0 against ratification. If memory serves, Bill Clinton was President at that time.
And this country is not closer to ratifying Kyoto ten years hence. The decisive vote occurred not because, as Mr. Larsen asserts, "barely half of Americans have any awareness of the subject [global warming]".
These days, you'd have to live in a cave not to have heard of global warming. From CNN's recent "Planet in Peril" series to NBC's gimmicky "Green Week", Americans are bombarded daily with global warming "awareness".
Mr. Larsen is clearly laboring under the assumption that if the US signed onto Kyoto, the environment would then improve. The facts suggest otherwise.
To date, 137 developing countries have ratified the protocol, but they have no obligation beyond monitoring and reporting their emissions. In other words, countries with huge carbon footprints such as Brazil, China and India have no obligation under Kyoto to reduce their carbon output.
And a quick glace at actual carbon dioxide emission figures (www.census.gov/compendia/statab/tables/07s1317.xls) demonstrates just how predictably feckless Kyoto has been. If you study emissions from 1998 (when countries began to ratify Kyoto) to 2004 (the latest numbers in the study) you'll find the following:
· Emissions from countries that signed the treaty increased 21.1%.
· Emissions from non-signers increased 10.0%.
· Emissions from the US increased 6.6%.
In other words, the US has done a far better job than Kyoto signatories in controlling its emissions since the inception of the treaty. And it gets better: The Department of Energy reports that U.S. emissions declined 1.5 percent in 2006. It should be obvious that energy efficiency and innovation is alive and well in the US–without the Kyoto Accords.
So what impact would the Kyoto treaty have if it were completely implemented? The now widely acknowledged "savings" (i.e., amount of warming avoided) is ~0.07 °C by the year 2050. Thus the impact of Kyoto, statistically speaking, cannot be measured as it is too small.
But while the benefits of Kyoto need a microscope to be examined, the costs of this treaty are readily understood as they would ultimately run in the trillions of dollars. The U.S. Energy Information Administration and most independent economists put the annual cost of Kyoto at around two percent of U.S. gross domestic product, with some estimates as high as four percent. It will cost your household $3,000 per year for the privilege of signing the Kyoto treaty.
Since Mr. Larsen boasts of Denmark's donations to impoverished countries, perhaps he'll consider this: The estimated costs of Kyoto exceed UN estimates for the cost of eliminating malaria and providing clean drinking water to every human being on earth–combined.
Mr. Larsen seems to be impressed with the farce in Bali. I think the moment was captured perfectly by the Daily Mail's recent report:
"As the 200-nation Bali conference wrangled over a minor procedural matter, the Dutch diplomat in charge of the talks burst into tears and had to be led away by colleagues. Moments earlier, Mr. de Boer had been warning delegates that failure to reach an agreement on global warming could 'plunge the world into conflict'. Mr de Boer, distinctively dressed in a floral shirt, stepped up to the microphone to defend his staff–only to find that the words would no longer come. As his unfinished sentences trailed away, he broke down and walked off the platform to supportive applause. 'He wasn't just wiping his eyes, he was in floods of tears' , said one observer. 'Three colleagues–one of them a woman–formed a protective group around him and escorted him out of the hall. It was all very dramatic.'
I'm sure it was.
Jay Craft
St Croix
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