So in the history of environmental policy the game plan when it comes to making legislation is more reactive rather than proactive. It takes a dramatic event, I choose an event that is not a single incident of disaster but a long trending disaster of carbon dioxide emission.
The Kyoto Agreement
The Kyoto Protocol is an amendment to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), an international treaty created to bring countries together to reduce global warming and to deal with the effects of temperature increases. In Japan in 1997, scientists decided to do something about the giant hole in the ozone layer due to the growing industrial nature of every country around the world. Over 55 countries agreed on the terms of controlling the carbon dioxide emissions from large industries, these countries who agreed to this treaty were responsible for over 65% of the world’s CO2 emissions. The United States was a part of this agreement until George W. Bush withdrew his support in 2001.
This agreement’s goal was to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions and for the scientific minds across the global to unite and attempt to better understand how carbon dioxide emissions can be controlled and altered to help the environment. One of the downsides to the Kyoto Agreement was the great cost. In 2001, 178 countries accepted this concept while the United States backed out due to the grand total of this project being over 400 billion dollars. Bush said it would bankrupt the economy and harm the job market due to the 4.9 million jobs that would be lost due to this treaty.
