Could Kyoto Protocol Use a Touch of Montreal?
Date: 17-Sep-07
Country: US
Author: Deborah Zabarenko, Environment Correspondent
For those who think the Kyoto Protocol is not working to
cut greenhouse gas emissions that are heating the planet, why
not take some lessons from the Montreal Protocol, praised as
the world's most successful climate treaty?
Both the United Nations and the Bush administration plan to
try out this idea this week as parties to the treaty gather in
Montreal, 20 years after the pact to cut ozone-depleting
chemicals was signed. Sunday, the anniversary of the signing,
has been dubbed International Ozone Day.
The Montreal Protocol aims to cut down on emissions of
chemicals that deplete the stratospheric ozone layer, which
shields Earth from ultraviolet solar radiation that can cause
skin cancer and other ailments.
The ozone layer is still thin in spots, especially over the
South Pole, but the treaty is considered a raging success
because it mapped a way to cut production of ozone-depleting
substances. So far, 191 countries from the developed and
developing world have signed this pact, and have phased out
more than 95 percent of ozone-depleting substances.
Because some chemicals that eat stratospheric ozone also
contribute to global warming, the United Nations Environment
Program and the White House plan to urge speeding up some
requirements of the Montreal Protocol. They argue that this
would have a bigger impact on climate change than the Kyoto
Protocol, signed in Japan in 1997.
"We will push for an agreement among the parties to
accelerate the phase-out of hydrochlorofluorocarbons (HCFCs),
chemicals that not only destroy the ozone layer, but contribute
significantly to climate change," the US State Department
said in a statement before the meeting.
James Connaughton, head of the White House Council on
Environmental Quality, said Washington wants HCFCs -- used in
refrigerators and air conditioners -- phased out 10 years
earlier than under the current timetable.
OZONE-EATERS AND CARBON DIOXIDE
"It would produce at least two times the reductions (in
greenhouse gases) than the Kyoto Protocol," Connaughton said in
a Reuters interview in Brussels.
The United States is not part of the Kyoto Protocol,
arguing that it would cost US jobs and wrongly excludes
developing nations like China and India from goals to cut their
greenhouse gas emissions, including carbon dioxide spewed by
coal-fired power plants and petroleum-fueled vehicles.
But using the Montreal Protocol to fight global warming is
"simplistic," said one Washington-based environmental expert
who deals with the US government.
Climate change is a more complex problem than ozone
depletion, this consultant said, requesting anonymity. And the
big problem with climate change remains carbon dioxide
emissions, not ozone-depleting chemicals, the consultant said.
All the industries covered by the Montreal Protocol account
for perhaps 5 percent of total global warming emissions, the
consultant said, while carbon dioxide from energy production
and mobile sources accounts for 75 percent.
Annie Petsonk of Environmental Defense noted a fundamental
difference between the Montreal and Kyoto treaties: in the
ozone pact, all countries are compelled to cut back on the
amount of ozone-eating substances they produce, but developing
countries have a 10-year grace period and get financial
incentives to do it.
Under the Kyoto Protocol, developing countries are exempt
from limiting emissions from greenhouse gases, Petsonk said in
a telephone interview.
Drusilla Hufford, director of stratospheric protection at
the US Environmental Protection Agency, said some part of the
Montreal Protocol's success was its genesis: based on science
and flexible in the way its goals could be met.
It also had the support of the US administration, which
is not the case with the Kyoto agreement on climate change.
"In Kyoto, the United S
