KYOTO PROTOCOL

In December 1997 industrialized countries agreed to reduce their emissions of the gases that cause global warming as a first step towards stabilizing the world's climate.

They agreed the Kyoto Protocol, an international treaty that sets targets for cutting countries' climate-changing emissions to below 1990 levels. The EU accepted a target cut of 8 percent, the US 7 percent and Japan 6 percent.

The Kyoto Protocol will not come into force until 55 countries, representing 55 percent of total 1990 emissions, ratify it. In other words, these countries must enact legislation to meet the terms of the Protocol, which would be legally binding. Countries have set themselves a deadline of September 2002, when the World Summit on Sustainable Development meets in South Africa.

In March 2001, just weeks after his inauguration, President Bush announced that the US would not ratify the Kyoto Protocol. He declared it "dead".

In July 2001 in Bonn the international community showed that the Protocol is still alive despite the absence of the US by reaching a political agreement on the rules for its implementation. The US was not party to this agreement. The details of the rules were finalized at the Seventh Conference of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol in Marrakech, Morocco in October 2001, and the Protocol is now ready for ratification.

America is the largest polluter in the world. With 4 percent of the world's population, it discharges a quarter of the world's carbon dioxide. But President Bush did not hesitate to sabotage attempts to agree the Kyoto Protocol. ExxonMobil led the oil lobby against the Kyoto Protocol and fully supported and encouraged President Bush's moves.

The Kyoto Protocol is only a first step towards stabilizing the world's climate. But it is a vital one. No country has the right to declare it dead and condemn us all to the nightmare of global warming.

The Stop ExxonMobil Alliance is a broad association of rights groups working to influence ExxonMobil's behavior in the human rights, environment, governance and community relations areas. Alliance members support each others' demands but do not have expertise or take public position on all the issue areas.