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The Kyoto Protocol
05/28/2002
Listen in RealAudio 
Imagine what it's like to get 39 countries to sign a legally binding treaty to
reduce emissions of gases from an energy source, which drives world
economies.
Of course I'm talking about the Kyoto Protocol. It's the international framework for
reducing greenhouse gases from combustion of fossil fuels that may be causing
global warming. You may remember that the largest producer of those substances,
the United States, pulled out of the agreement last year. leaving its future
unresolved.
Hi, I'm Bryan Yeaton of the Weather Notebook and this report is part of our special
series on global climate change.
Kyoto is not the first attempt at an international agreement on harmful emissions of a
substance. Karen Fisher Vanden is an assistant professor of environmental studies at
Dartmouth College and she says Kyoto traces its roots to another treaty in the late
1980s.
KFV: In 1987 countries agreed and signed the Montreal Protocol, which is an
agreement that sets out targets and a timetable to phase out ozone depleting
substances and this was deemed a success because they were able to achieve
international cooperation pretty easily and in fact they've been able to achieve a phase
out of the substance much sooner than they orignally expected.
Getting consensus went faster because chloroflurocarbons or CFCs (the culprit
substances responsible for the ozone hole) were easier to limit and took less of a bite
out of the economies of producer nations.
KFV: And when we're talking about climate change we're talking about the combustion
of fossil fuels from a huge number of different sources; which may be a difficult thing to
find alternatives for that are not that expensive and not easy to achieve.
In future reports, we'll take a look at alternatives.
The Weather Notebook is a production of the Mount Washington Observatory. The
series on global climate change is supported by the New England Science Center
Collaborative and the Roy A. Hunt Foundation.
Today's Links
The Kyoto Protocol
http://docs.unfccc.de/convkp/kpeng.html
More Info
http://www.cop4.org/kp/kp.html
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