On this day, 24 years ago,
EU takes Kyoto fight to Moscow
April 6, 2001
MOSCOW, Russia — A European Union delegation has arrived in Moscow to discuss the fate of the Kyoto climate treaty.
The delegation started a international tour on Friday aimed at shoring up support for the treaty now that Washington has pulled out of the agreement.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 371ppm. As of 2025 it is 427ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that George W Bush who had “won” the 2000 election via the Supreme Court, had immediately backtracked on a campaign-trail promise to regulate CO2 emissions. Funny that. And by crashing the international negotiations, he forced the Europeans to try to stitch things back together again. Thus the trip to Moscow.
What I think we can learn from this is that you can’t trust Americans.
What happened next The Russians finally decided in 2004 that they’d do the deal – in exchange for World Trade Organisation membership. Kyoto came to be, and so the whole “what do we replace Kyoto with?” caravan got moving, until the wheels fell off at Copenhagen in 2009.
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.
References
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Also on this day:
April 6, 2006 – Canadian “experts” (not) keep culture wars going.
April 6, 2006 – the anti-climate dam of John Howard begins to crack…
April 6, 2012 – Genetically-modified humans? – All Our Yesterdays