Voluntary Compliance an Oxymoron (2/18/02)
by Dean Hartwell
President Bush
recently renounced the Kyoto Accords of 1997. This international treaty
requires signers to lower their output of gasses known to cause global warming.
Instead, Bush has an alternative plan: allow nations to voluntarily curb their
output levels. To see the vagueness of this idea, one need only recall the
reasons a bloc in Congress opposed the accords when then-President Clinton
announced his support.
This group succeeded in preventing the United States from signing the treaty by
convincing enough people that the accords were bad for our economy. If the
opponents of Kyoto don't like the idea of mandatory reductions, is there any
reason they would volunteer to comply with them?
The President has at least admitted he thinks that the issue is between jobs
and the environment and that he prefers jobs. Unfortunately, this view
overlooks the chance that more businesses will form and thus create jobs in the
cleaner parts of our nation, not to mention in other parts of the world.
The United States should volunteer now to sign the Kyoto Accords.