Kyoto climate change

THE HOPE that the world will curb global warming before it drastically changes weather, farming, and the spread of insect-borne diseases was buoyed by two developments this week. The Russian parliament approved the Kyoto Protocol yesterday, and petroleum prices persisted at more than $50 a barrel. Those prices give all countries a powerful motive to use less oil.

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Under the terms of the protocol, Russia's approval was needed to put Kyoto into effect, though some nations have been striving to meet its limits on emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases on their own. With the protocol in place, its advocates say, businesses and governments will speed development of alternative energy sources and efficiency improvements in all uses of hydrocarbon fuels. A global market in emission-credit trading, already in place, will also get a new impetus in curbing CO2 releases.

However, the United States, which emits 25 percent of the world's greenhouse gases, has rejected Kyoto. Also, the protocol's terms demand no cutbacks on emissions by developing countries like China and India until 2012 at the earliest. If the world is to address the problem of climate change effectively, it is crucial that these outlier countries become committed to greenhouse gas reductions.

The United States could become more part of the solution and less part of the problem by passing the McCain-Lieberman climate change bill and by electing Senator John Kerry president. While Kerry finds fault with Kyoto, he at least favors working with other countries on a new global warming agreement. Bush broke a 2000 campaign pledge to regulate CO2 emissions.

While less restrictive than Kyoto, the McCain-Lieberman bill would cap such emissions from energy, transportation, and manufacturing companies and create a market-based emissions trading program similar to one that has helped cut acid-rain emissions.

Demand for oil from quickly industrializing China is a major factor in keeping prices so high that users will inevitably seek less costly alternatives. The risk is that nations not committed to reducing global warming will turn more to coal, the biggest source of CO2. Russian ratification of Kyoto, still awaiting pro forma approvals of the upper house of the Duma and President Vladimir Putin, could be crucial in cementing an international consensus that the problem cannot be ignored. China, to its credit, has already set auto efficiency standards better than those in the United States. Enacting McCain-Lieberman would at least signal an end to US denial that climate change is here, and accelerating.