16 Feb 2005 Washington Post on Kyoto: Three Sentences, None Accurate

From Wednesday’s Washington Post:

The [Kyoto] treaty is aimed at controlling global warming linked to carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. It was negotiated in Kyoto, Japan, in 1997. Although the United States helped shape it, President Bush pulled the United States out as soon as he took office.

Three sentences. None accurate.

The first is inaccurate by omission, as it fails to address even the possibility of economic and/or strategic motives for the treaty. (More details here and here.)

The second is correct only insofar as there was a conference in Kyoto in 1997 in which some of the negotiations took place. There were other official conferences and many negotiations in many places. (The U.S. actually signed the treaty at the Buenos Aires, Argentina conference in November, 1998.)

The third is flatly false. The U.S. has never withdrawn from Kyoto. President Bush, like President Clinton, has declined to send the Kyoto Treaty to the Senate, but the U.S. remains a party to international treaty conferences and the Bush Administration has not removed the U.S. as a signatory to the Kyoto Treaty. (More details here.)

I’d fisk this article more, but I have a life.