The back door to Kyoto.(Correction, Please!)

ITEM: The headline in the Tribune de Geneve for February 16 read, "Historic Kyoto treaty to save world from warming takes effect without US." "The Kyoto Protocol," reported Agence France-Presse in that Swiss newspaper, "the landmark treaty requiring cuts in gas emissions which cause global warming, took effect Wednesday with the support of 141 nations but a boycott by the biggest polluter, the United States."

ITEM: "The treaty is aimed at controlling global warming linked to carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases," reported the Washington Post for February 16. "Although the United States helped shape it, President Bush pulled the United States out as soon as he took office."

CORRECTION: It is true that the Bush administration expressed disagreements with the Kyoto Protocol. Complying with that treaty, the White House estimated, would have cost 5 million jobs and $400 billion a year. However, the United States remains a signatory, and the president has not formally removed the U.S. from the treaty. The Clinton administration, knowing it would fail, refused to send the treaty to the Senate for ratification; the Bush administration did likewise.

While there may be no de jure ratification, there's been plenty of de facto compliance in response to the global warming scare. Recently, for example, the head of the United Nations Environment Program, Klaus Toepfer, was interviewed by China's official Xinhuanet news agency, which reported: "Some analysts have argued that without the United States the Kyoto Protocol is more dead than alive. However, Toepfer said that UNEP is not so pessimistic, noting that many individual states in the United States are adopting or planning to adopt greenhouse gas reductions in line with the spirit of the protocol."

The U.S. State Department is also using Kyoto as a guide. State Department spokesman Richard Boucher admitted as much as the treaty took effect in mid-February: "While the United States and countries with binding emissions restrictions under the Kyoto Protocol are taking different paths, our destination is the same, and compatible with other efforts. For 2005, the United States has committed nearly $5.8 billion to address climate change." The U.S., Boucher said on February 15, "has also initiated 14 bilateral climate partnerships with countries and regional organizations that along with the United States account for over 70 percent ...