CEI Applauds End of US Support for Kyoto Protocol
Washington, D.C., March 27, 2001 – The Competitive Enterprise Institute welcomes Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Christie Todd Whitman's remarks yesterday that the Bush administration recognizes that continuing the international negotiations on the Kyoto Protocol is pointless. It has become clear to everyone in the administration that the global warming treaty will never be ratified by the US Senate, and Congress has prohibited any attempt to implement it prior to ratification.<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office” />
“The Kyoto Protocol is dead for the simple reason that it would require American consumers to pay much higher energy bills without doing anything to solve the alleged problem of global warming,” said Myron Ebell, Director of Global Warming Policy at CEI. “To walk away from the Kyoto negotiations is the right thing to do not only for American consumers, but because the scientific case for catastrophic global warming has collapsed as well.”
“The real challenge now is to ensure that the US negotiating position for the next round of climate talks asserts that any energy suppression policies derived from questionable, politicized science remain a non-starter,” said CEI analyst Christopher Horner. “International bureaucrats have been spending their last few years working on a treaty that never would have been ratified by the United States, so in that sense, we were safe. Now that the US plans to offer a new plan to counter Kyoto and its foreign proponents, the administration faces a very serious decision as to what that plan will contain.”
“We hope that the Bush-Cheney Administration will now pursue global warming policies that are consistent with its goal of affordable and abundant energy,” said Ebell. “These should include policies to meet the commitments made by the US under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, which the Senate ratified in 1992.” Senator Larry Craig (R-ID) has introduced legislation that would fulfill those commitments without damaging the economy.
For more information: The Competitive Enterprise Institute has published a policy study, Greenhosue Policy Without Regrets, which analyzes climate change policies that make sense in terms of costs and benefits.
CEI is a non-profit, non-partisan public policy group dedicated to the principles of free enterprise and limited government. For more information about CEI, check out our website at www.cei.org.