Correction, please!(Correction Notice)

Warming to a Radical Task

ITEM: British Prime Minister Tony Blair announced "ambitious new targets for reducing carbon dioxide emissions and urged industrialized countries to redouble their efforts to tackle global warming," reported Agence France-Presse for February 25th. "Blair pledged to slash Britain's output of greenhouse gases by 60 percent by 2050, going far beyond the country's target of a 12.5 percent reduction agreed upon in the 1997 Kyoto global warming treaty." It "is clear," said Blair, "Kyoto is not radical enough."

ITEM: The prime minister, reported the Guardian (U.K) for February 25th, would "also challenge the U.S., the biggest energy consumer on earth, to do more to cut consumption. He will challenge claims that cuts in emissions threaten economic growth...."

CORRECTION: Adopting the Kyoto Protocols would be disastrous. A study by the U.S. Energy Information Administration, for example, estimates that implementing Kyoto would bump gasoline prices by as much as 66 cents per gallon by 2010; increase electricity prices by up to 86 percent; and cost the American economy $400 billion annually.

Indeed, the potential harm to America was a driving force for U.S. competitors. To Europeans, this treaty "is about the United States' 'unfair tax competition,' its government consistently refusing to match the Europeans' zeal for taxing energy use to modify behaviour, particularly repressing automobile use and population," noted Christopher Homer in Canada's National Post.

Nevertheless, even if every signatory fully complied with Kyoto, the reduction in the global surface temperature would be a meager 0.07[degrees]C by the year 2050, according to the U.S. National Center for Atmospheric Research.

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