Kyoto Protocol Quotes

We think that the Kyoto protocol is a necessary document, necessary process. I am convinced that we will agree to disagree about substance.

To put that into some perspective, when Bill Clinton and Al Gore had first taken the idea of the Kyoto Protocol up to the Congress, the United States Senate voted it down 95 to nothing.

On big issues like war in Iraq, but in many other issues they simply must be multilateral. There's no other way around. You have the instances like the global warming convention, the Kyoto protocol, when the U.S. went its own way.

The U.S. withdrawal from the Kyoto protocol endangers the entire process.

The common enemy of humanity is man. In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill. ...The real enemy then is humanity itself.

It doesn't matter what is true, it only matters what people believe is true.

Carbon dioxide does not cause or contribute to smog, and the Kyoto treaty would do nothing to reduce or prevent smog.

We've got to ride the global-warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, we will be doing the right thing in terms of economic policy and environmental policy.

When the Kyoto Protocol enters into the force tomorrow, the world will take a significant and long-awaited first step towards stemming global warming. Instead of stepping forward as the world leader on climate change, however, the Bush Administration is clinging to the role of world obstructionist.

Global warmers predict that global warming is coming, and our emissions are to blame. They do that to keep us worried about our role in the whole thing. If we aren't worried and guilty, we might not pay their salaries. It's that simple.

Sensible policies on global warming should weight the costs of slowing climate change against the benefits of slower climate change. Ironically, recent policy initiatives, such as the Kyoto Protocol of 1997, have been introduced without any attempt to link the emissions controls with the benefits of the lower emissions.

Ideology on which the Kyoto Protocol is based, is a new form of totalitarian ideology, along with Marxism, Communism and socialism.

The Kyoto Protocol...the first component of an authentic global governance.

In developing countries the situation could be even worse because developing countries do not have to count their emissions under the Kyoto Protocol. Private companies from industrialized nations will seek cheap carbon credits for their country in the developing world.

The strategy behind the Kyoto Protocol has no grounding in economics or environmental policy.

For the first time, humanity is instituting a genuine instrument Kyoto Protocol of global governance,"..."By acting together, by building this unprecedented instrument, the first component of an authentic global governance, we are working for dialogue and peace.

I was at the table with three Europeans, and we were having lunch. And they were talking about their role as lead authors. And they were talking about how they were trying to make the report so dramatic that the United States would just have to sign that Kyoto Protocol.

Kyoto protocol is not a simple environmental issue, where you can say scientists are not unanimous. This is about international relations, this is about the economy, about trying to create a level playing field for big businesses throughout the world. You have to understand what is at stake, and that is why it is serious.

Attempts to estimate the impacts of climate change continue to be highly speculative.

Kyoto costs a lot, does nothing to prevent calamity, and pays no compensation in the event of loss. If my insurance broker offered that sort of policy, I would not carry insurance. Instead what my broker offers is a policy that costs a little and pays full compensation in the event of loss. If someone wants to propose that as a policy on global warming, I'm all in favour.

In reality, Kyoto was a huge transfer of resources from the United States to the Third World, under the guise of environmental protection.

The Kyoto Protocol is a death pact, however strange it may sound, because its main aim is to strangle economic growth and economic activity in countries that accept the protocol's requirements.

We have received no single argument in favour of this document except political pressure. No link has been established between carbon dioxide emissions and climate change. No other objective facts have been presented in recent time. The IPCC's reports in 1990 and 1995 show it clearly.

The climatically inefficient and economically disastrous Kyoto Protocol, based on IPCC projections, was correctly defined by President George W. Bush as "fatally flawed". This criticism was recently followed by the President of Russia Vladimir V. Putin. I hope that their rational views might save the world from enormous damage that could be induced by implementing recommendations based on distorted science.

Three scenarios for post-Kyoto emissions reductions indicate that ... the long-term consequences are small... The influence of the Protocol would, furthermore, be undetectable for many decades.

Kyoto is likely to yield far less than the targeted emissions reduction. That failure will most likely be papered over with creative accounting, shifting definitions of carbon sinks, and so on. If this happens, the credibility of the international process for addressing climate change will be at risk.

Ideology on which the Kyoto Protocol is based, is a new form of totalitarian ideology, along with Marxism, Communism and socialism. We had doubts about the Kyoto Protocol, we wanted reasoning from our partners in the European Union, in the IPCC. Formal requests had been sent to these organizations. But we have not received responses yet, which suggests that no coherent answers can be offered. What we hear is 'it is not comprehensive responses that matter, we will not give them anyway; what is important is whether you believe us or not'.

If the relatively rich participating countries want to stabilize atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases, they will have to pay at least some poor countries to reduce their emissions. Achievement of substantial reduction in this way implies international transfers of wealth on a scale well beyond anything in recorded history. There is no effective political support for such a Herculean effort, particularly in the United States.

We are close to a consensus that the Kyoto Protocol does huge economic, political, social and ecological damage to the Russian Federation. In addition, it certainly violates the rights and freedoms of Russian citizens, and well as the rights and freedoms of citizens in those countries which signed and ratified it.

Globally, emissions may have to be reduced, the scientists are telling us, by as much as 60% or 70%, with developed countries likely to have to make even bigger cuts if we're going to allow the developing world to have their share of growing industrial prosperity...The Kyoto Protocol is only the first rather modest step. Much, much deeper emission reductions will be needed in future. The political implications are mind-blowing.

It is becoming increasingly clear that the targets in the Kyoto Protocol cannot and will not be met on the established timetable in the United States and elsewhere.

Redirect federal spending aimed at fulfilling the terms of the increasingly irrelevant Kyoto Protocol.

The different policies reduce damages by only a modest amount. Indeed, one of the surprises is how little the policies affect the damages from global warming. The reasons are that, because there is so much inertia in the climate system and because the Protocol reduced the global temperature increase by only a fraction of a degree over the next century.

I think the deeper truth is that the Kyoto Protocols will not be followed by anyone really and that, in effect, nothing will be done to reduce carbon dioxide and other greenhouse emissions.

The laws of physics are not about to change. Set your agenda by what’s happening in the atmosphere, not by what is happening in the artificial world of Kyoto.

The impact of the Kyoto Protocol on global temperature is quite modest, especially for the first century. The reduction in global mean temperature in the Annex I case relative to the reference in 2100 is 0.13ºC; this compares with a difference of 0.17ºC from the Kyoto Protocol calculated by Wigley. The temperature reduction in the optimal run is essentially the same as the Kyoto runs by the 22nd century.

Nobody is going to give away the farm in Kyoto. It is not anybody's to give away. And even if the United States Senate would actually ratify a bad treaty, anything called for under the treaty would require legislation passed through both houses.

It will be nearly impossible to slow warming appreciably without condemning much of the world to poverty unless energy sources that emit little or no carbon dioxide become competitive with conventional fossil fuels.

With each passing year the difficulty of meeting any fixed quantitative target increases progressively. Moreover, plausible estimates of when the Protocol would go into effect leave such a small window of time before the first commitment period that achievement of the Kyoto targets will eventually pass out of reach.