BY DOUG JENNESS
ST. PAUL, Minnesota - For 11 days some 1,500 delegates from more than 150 countries met in Kyoto, Japan, to discuss adopting a protocol on limiting emissions of carbon dioxide and other gases that may cause global warming. The stated aim was to strengthen the 1992 Climate Change Treaty, which set voluntary emission goals for 34 countries by the year 2000. The agreement reached on December 11 would in theory require 38 industrialized countries to reduce carbon dioxide and other gases that can cause a greenhouse effect that might lead to climatic warming to below 1990 levels between 2008 and 2012.

Although the Kyoto conference was supposedly about protecting the world environment, the proposals and discussion there in fact centered on the economic rivalry and promotion of national interests of various capitalist regimes that increasingly dominate international trade discussions. The U.S. government, for example, pressed by auto and oil corporations and owners of electrical utilities, argued that it couldn't agree to reductions if semicolonial countries didn't also make cuts in the use of fossil fuels. The added costs to accommodate these changes by U.S. companies, they argued, would make Third World countries more competitive in the world market. Moreover, it initially pressed for reducing emissions to 1990 levels, not below them.

U.S. vice president Albert Gore, who has cultivated an image of concern over the environment, made a 16-hour stopover at the gathering. He walked a tightrope between U.S. industry lobbyists and environmentalists in separate meetings with them. Clearly, the main warming he was attentive to is the heating up of the 2000 presidential elections.

The dominant governments in the European Union pressed for a faster pace to emission reductions than the Clinton administration in the United States. Per capita emissions in Europe are less than in the United States, and if U.S. companies could be forced to adopt bigger cuts it might reduce the relative cost of some European products.

Government officials in some European countries boast that they have been able to keep emissions relatively lower because they rely much more on nuclear power than on coal-fired plants to generate electricity. Nuclear power supplies 75 percent of electricity in France, 50 percent in Sweden, and 30 percent in Germany compared to 20 percent in the United States. There is no proven way that nuclear power can be made safe, however, and serious accidents such as the one at Chernobyl plant in the Ukraine and the one at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania point to the deadly danger that this source of power represents.

The Japanese government's initial stand was between that of the EU and Washington, while the Australian government said it favored no reductions because it is a coal-exporting nation.

Under the deal that was finally negotiated, the European Union would reduce its emissions by 8 percent; the United States by 7 percent; and Japan by 6 percent. Some smaller countries would face smaller reductions; others none at all. The agreement reached in Kyoto will go into effect if it is ratified by countries representing 55 percent of the 1990 level of carbon dioxide by a deadline of March 1999. It remains to be seen whether or not the U.S. Senate, which voted unanimously July 25 not to approve any agreement that doesn't include emission reductions by China and Third World countries, will ratify it.

One of the propositions most steeped in the moneychangers mentality of the meeting was President Clinton's plan for a system of tradable emissions permits. This would allow governments that voluntarily reduce emissions below a certain level to sell the difference to others as unused "right" to pollute. This is the scheme now being used between companies in the United States under the Clean Air Act of 1990. Washington is a perspective buyer of such permits.

Bonn has agreed to assume a larger share of the total emissions slated to be cut in Europe. The bargain would allow poorer countries like Portugal and Ireland to increase emissions as much as 30 percent.

This pollution exchange proposal was strongly opposed by the Chinese government and was left open for further discussion scheduled to begin next November.

Representatives of many semicolonial countries argued that the burden for reducing greenhouse emissions should be on the industrially developed imperialist countries, where the greatest portion of carbon dioxide emitted into the atmosphere originates. The additional cost of reducing emissions would force them, they argue, to slow down economic development. Monopoly-rigged pricing and domination of world markets have led to the institutionalization of unequal trade relations between a handful of industrialized imperialist countries and the large number of oppressed countries.

Part of the warped development of these countries as a result their unequal relations and the conditions imposed by imperialist banks has led to disastrous air pollution that is today harming the health of millions. But the conference didn't address the problem.

There was scant attention to the massive destruction of the tropical rain forests in Asia and Latin America. In the past few months the amount of carbon dioxide spewed into the atmosphere as the result of the burning of forests in Indonesia is larger than all the emissions from Europe in one year. There has also been widespread burning in the Amazon, partly due to government pressure in Brazil on small farmers to burn or forfeit credit. The vast fires in Indonesia and the Amazon make more of the world on fire in 1997 than at any other time in history.

In both South America and Indonesia conditions resulting from the El Niņo weather pattern are often blamed for the fires. But the slash and burn policies imposed on farmers and carried out by big timber companies based in the imperialist world are much more responsible. And not only does the burning of these forests release large amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, but it also eliminates one of the main absorbers of carbon dioxide.  
 
 
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