Implications of the Kyoto Protocol on Climate Change: Hearing Before the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate, One Hundred Fifth Congress, Second Session, February 11, 1998, Volume 4

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U.S. Government Printing Office, 1998 - 92 pages

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Page 42 - Programme, concluded in 1995 that "the balance of evidence suggests that there is a discernible human influence on global climate.
Page 64 - Senate that — (1) the United States should not be a signatory to any protocol to, or other agreement regarding, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change of 1992, at negotiations in Kyoto in December 1997, or thereafter, which would — (A) mandate new commitments to limit or reduce greenhouse gas emissions for the Annex I Parties...
Page 54 - Parties, unless the protocol or other agreement also mandates new specific scheduled commitments to limit or reduce greenhouse gas emissions for Developing Country Parties within the same compliance period...
Page 83 - ... and hydrofluorocarbons. These limits apply to the 38 so-called Annex I countries, which are the industrialized countries, defined to include Russia, Ukraine, and most Eastern European countries. Under the Kyoto Protocol, each industrial country's baseline is its 1990 emissions of CO,, methane, and N2O and its choice of 1990 or 1995 levels of the other three categories of gases.
Page 85 - SO2 experience demonstrates clearly how programs like international permit trading, Joint Implementation, and the Clean Development Mechanism will lead firms to find cheaper ways of reducing emissions that can lead to unexpectedly low costs.
Page 85 - The third type of flexibility, and perhaps the most important, is "where flexibility" (international). As I have already emphasized, emissions have the same environmental consequences regardless of where in the world they occur. Therefore, the least-cost approach to controlling climate change is to reduce emissions wherever such reductions are cheapest. The Kyoto Protocol, because of US insistence and persistence, includes three important cost-saving...
Page 87 - To give away the punch line, our conclusion is as follows: the net costs of our policies to •educe emissions are likely to be small, assuming those reductions are undertaken in an efficient manner and we are successful in securing meaningful developing country participation as well as effective international trading, and the Clean Development Mechanism in future negotiations. That potential small net premium, even excluding the benefits of mitigating climate change, in...
Page 83 - US negotiating position. The targets for the European Union and Japan are 8 percent and 6 percent below 1990 levels, respectively. Australia, New Zealand, Norway, Russia, and Ukraine all have limits somewhat less ambitious when phrased as cuts relative to their 1990 levels. In sum, over the period from 2008 to 2012, the industrial countries are expected to reduce their average emissions of greenhouse gases to about 5 percent below their 1990 levels. The President has made clear that he will not submit...
Page 61 - ... aggregate anthropogenic carbon dioxide equivalent emissions of the greenhouse gases listed in annex A do not exceed their assigned amounts, calculated pursuant to their quantified emission limitation and reduction commitments inscribed in annex B...
Page 70 - ... the developed country Parties. 4. The developed country Parties and other developed Parties included in annex II shall also assist the developing country Parties that are particularly vulnerable to the adverse effects of climate change in meeting costs of adaptation to those adverse effects.

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