In fact, the official bureaucratic title of this get-together is the Sixth Session of the Conference of the Participants to the U. N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, and it has attracted heads of state and government like Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands and Jacques Chirac, president of France. But many American observers are wondering exactly what all the delegates are doing here. The answer is probably all three, but the first two seem to predominate. Let me set the stage. The reason for the reduction proposal was increasing evidence that the Earth is getting warmer and that human intervention is playing a role.
Most scientists believe the Earth is warming, though satellite observations cast some doubt.
Still even if warming is conceded, whether the warming is significant in scale, whether it is part of natural cycles observed over thousands of years, or whether it is the consequence of the burning of fossil fuels are matters open to debate. So are the question of where warming is occurring and what will happen as a result. The science is, to say the least, unclear. But that didn t stop delegates at Kyoto from laying out a plan to reduce emissions a plan so expensive that it would almost certainly lead to a reduction in economic growth around the world, hurting not just developed countries like the United States but poorer nations, for which the U.S., Europe and Japan are prime markets. The Europeans are holding off, pressuring the United States to move first a development which is, frankly, a pipedream.