GREENHOUSE EFFECT: WHAT MAY HAVE TO BE DONE

The following are the key provisions of the Kyoto Protocol on global warming, which nations of the world must ratify by March 1999, and which is already being called 'historic' by the media:

By the year 2010, the industrialized nations are required to lower their greenhouse gas emissions by 5.2% below 1990 levels

By the year 2010, the U.S. is required to lower its greenhouse gas emissions by 7% below 1990 levels, i.e., by some 400 million tons of carbon per year

Developing nations are exempt from these mandatory reductions

An emissions trading system (similar to the one existing in the U.S. for sulfur dioxide emissions) is accepted in principle, but the delegates have one additional year (until November 1998) to figure out how exactly it would work

The Clinton Administration now has two tough selling jobs:
(1) It must reveal to the people how exactly it plans to achieve this goal.
(2) It must convince Congress to ratify the treaty.

Stay tuned! In the coming decades, we might be having much more of this kind of scenery, not only in Wales, but elsewhere in the industrialized world as well.

(from TIME, December 15, 1997)

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