History of Global Climate Change Policy
Under the under Clinton administration, led by Vice President Gore, the U.S. engaged in the Kyoto Accords, seeking an amendment to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change that would set mandatory limits on greenhouse gas emissions. In 1997, the Senate unanimously rejected the Protocol. In 1998, Vice president Gore symbolically signed it but the Clinton Administration never submitted the Protocol to the Senate for ratification.In 2001 the Bush administration reversed U.S. policy and pulled us out of the Kyoto Accords, saying that the requirements would be too costly. The Kyoto Protocol went on to be ratified by 162 nations, making up over 55% of greenhouse emissions, but without participation from the U.S., which is the world's biggest carbon polluter.
In October, 2003 Joseph I. Lieberman (D-CT) and John McCain (R-AZ) introduced the Climate Stewardship Act into the Senate. The act would cap and reduce carbon dioxide and five other heat-trapping pollutants emitted by power plants, refineries and other industries, constituting 85% of the countries emissions. The measured failed by a vote of 43 to 55. Similar measures were introduced in 2004 and 2005.
In 2006, former Vice President Al Gore released a documentary called An Inconvenient Truth, which laid out the evidence for the reality of global warming/climate change. The movie generated widespread interest and went on to become the third-highest-grossing documentary in U.S. history and win the 2006 academy award for best documentary.
In 2006, after two years of study and action on the issue, the delegates at the 2006 General Assembly in St. Louis, voted to adopt Threat of Global Warming/Climate Change as a Unitarian Universalist Association Statement of Conscience. While Unitarian Universalists have drafted many statements about the environment, this was the first one to specifically address global climate change.
In 2007, Al Gore and the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change were jointly awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace, in recognition of their work to raise awareness of the urgency of the issue.
In 2007, the Bush administration finally acknowledged that global climate change has human causes and needed human action to address. The administration, however, refuses to consider mandatory caps on emmission of green house gases.
For more information contact environment @ uua.org.
Last updated on Friday, June 20, 2008.
