Government Response to Global Warming

Introduction

The United States of America is the world's largest industrialized country and emitter of carbon dioxide. It is therefore widely regarded as the most significant contributor to global warming and climate change. U.S. climate change policies have never remained consistent, as they have tended to shift in accordance with the presidential administration in office. The current administration, led by George W. Bush, has come under particular scrutiny from the media, the scientific community, the general public, and other countries for its climate change policies.

The focus on climate change in the United States became particularly acute in the late 1980s and evolved out of concern about the growing damage to the ozone layer. For two decades, that problem had occupied the attention of scientists and policymakers. In the early 1970s, scientific researchers at the University of California in Irvine established clear evidence that chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs)—chemical compounds made up of fluorine, chlorine, and carbon—were damaging the ozone layer, the thin protective layer above the Earths atmosphere. The increased solar radiation entering the atmosphere as a result of this damage had the potential to cause health problems such as skin cancers and cataracts. At the time, CFCs were widely used as refrigerants, cleaning solvents, and the basis for aerosol products.

In October 1976, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) prohibited companies from manufacturing CFC-based products unless they were essential and threatened to cancel the product registration of companies that failed to comply. The following year, the agency ordered a gradual phase-out of CFCs from household products such as deodorants, hairsprays, and cleaners. In 1985, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) created a framework convention for the protection of the ozone layer. It encouraged governments to adopt relevant measures to that end, devised a Conference of the Parties composed of governments that had ratified the convention, and appointed a UN secretariat to monitor and frame the actions of the Conference of the Parties. The creation of the framework convention paved the way for international negotiations over the regulation of CFCs. These negotiations, although initially hindered by energy interests in both the European Union (EU) and the United States, ultimately led to the Montreal Protocol of 1988, a worldwide treaty that mandated a staged reduction in the production and consumption of fully halogenated CFCs. The treaty was more lenient toward developing countries, as it gave them a 10-year grace period for the phase-out of CFCs and promised them technological assistance from industrialized nations in return for switching to CFC alternatives. The United States ratified the Montreal Protocol on April 21, 1988, and brought it into effect at the beginning of the following year.

During the next 18 months, the signatories of the Montreal Protocol realized that the original draft of the protocol did not go far enough in controlling CFC emissions. At the second Conference of the Parties in June 1990, delegates placed further restrictions on the production and use of CFCs and further reduced the acceptable level for CFCs in the ...