IT’S ALWAYS BEEN AMERICA FIRST
HERE IS a brief history of America’s chequered involvement in the twodecade-old process that yielded the 2015 Paris accord endorsed by 196 nations — the first universal pact on curbing global warming.
KYOTO
RIGHT FROM the start, when the UN climate convention was signed in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, the United States resisted any notion of greenhouse gas limits being imposed on countries “topdown”.
INSTEAD, Washington has consistently insisted on national sovereignty when it comes to determining which gases to reduce, how, by how much, and by when.
IN 1997, the US joined most of the rest of the world in agreeing to the Kyoto Protocol, which listed binding emissions-curbing targets only for rich nations — those most responsible for carbon pollution blamed for global warming. THE US agreed to the deal. BILL CLINTON’S vice president Al Gore signed the treaty on America’s behalf in 1998, but the Democrat administration could never muster the two-thirds support required from the Senate to officially ratify it.
THE PACT entered into force without America in 2005 after Russia signed on.
COPENHAGEN
IN 2009, the world's nations gathered with the task of replacing the Kyoto Protocol with a new pact requiring action from all countries — including China and India, the world’s firstand third-biggest carbon polluters, and secondplaced US.
THE US, with backing from others, insisted that any deal not be termed a “treaty” that would require Senate ratification, or contain emissions limits that are binding under international law.
IN THE end, the meeting yielded a non-formal “accord”
PARIS
THE NEXT deadline, set at talks in Durban in 2011, was for a global deal to be finalised by 2015.
U.S. PRESIDENT Barack Obama led with China’s Xi Jinping to rally 195 countries around the common goal.
BUT with a Republicandominated Senate back home, he could do only so much.