text: But it is the president's last-minute dash to sign a climate-change treaty that is most disturbing. It was barely two weeks ago that talks broke down at the U.N.-sponsored climate-change negotiations in The Hague, capital of the Netherlands. The issue was the means by which industrial nations would be allowed to cut their greenhouse emissionsparticularly carbon dioxideto meet goals set at a similar conference in Kyoto in 1997. Under the protocol, negotiated by Vice President Al Gore, the United States would have had to cut its emissions by 7 percent from 1990 levels by 2012.