Paul,that is sophistry.  Article 3 clearly states they must reduce to 5% below 1990 levels just like the US.  So Annex B only indicates that the EU has been more lax in controlling polution(and if you have ever been there, you would easily see why).  The cost of the reduction is born equally among Europe and the US, however, the final nail in the coffin is when we go to subsidize the 3rd world efforts to clean up.  As is clearly demonstrable, the US pays the lions share of the UN bills, and these bills would also be placed most heavily on the US.

We need look no further to the current world where we get slammed for contributing 15b for aids research, and the EU skates.  Yet we are the ones being said to be niggardly?

But you did not really address the issue of the accord being bad law.  Sure, Brazil has a right to do with its land as it sees fit.  So do we, except if we sign that bad piece of legislation.  For then our right to determine the optimal use is taken away from Americans and given to some clowns that put Sudan on the Human Rights Commission.

Finally, while everyone talks about tropical rain forrests, the US and Canada are home to the largest exta-tropical rain forest in the world.  And it scrubs as much as the amazon (just not as much as all of SA).  So we could do the same thing that Brazil did, and it would be just as wrong.  So unless and until they come up with some good laws, bad law is worse than no law at all.  And Kyoto is bad law.

For the record, CO2, while called a pollutant, is not.  For if it were, and we eleiminate it, plants will die.  They need it to survive.

And finally, your statement about the biggest polluter is incorrect in many ways.  As a single nation, yes.  But in comparison to the EU, or even on a per capita basis, we are not.

One last item. While CHina does not pollute as much as the US, it is coming from a 3rd world economy to one of the 1st world, and as such is generating more and more pollution each year, both on a total and per capita basis. One day soon, it will pass us just from the shere size of its population. Yet Kyoto places no restrictions on them. Bad Law.

In US schools, they teach us that bailing water with a sieve is fool hardy.  If we cut our emisionns, and the rest of the world increases theirs, tehn nothing is accomplished.  THAT is what we are taught.

You want to cut emmissions?  Get a good law.  Bad law is worse than no law for it not only does not accomplish its goals, it gives people an unwarranted feel good attitude, about doing nothing.

Is that what they teach you in your schools?  That bad law is better than no law?

It does not matter what Kyoto said, it was what was left unsaid in that regard. Bad law is worse than no law, for it accomplishes nothing, and just stops people from pursuing the right thing.

And it is not the future of the planet.  Earth survived billions of years without man.  It will survive many more billions without them, and thrive.  Dont confuse the 2.

I will address your other issues when more time presents itself, however the above is wrong.  Annex B states the base year, which is the year the agreement was created, not 90, and represents the fact that Europe has worse polution controls than does the US. The 5% below 1990 levels is the target.  The 92 and 93% are the amount that will need to be cut to achieve those levels.

Kyoto is an example of where warm fuzzy feelings trumped common sense.

Kyoto was unfixable. It was based on a flawed premise - return emissions to the level they were on some arbitrary date. A date picked by European nations who calculated the easiest date for them.  Europeans who haven't been to the US are probably unaware of this but European air quality is deplorable. It's a heck of a lot easier for Europeans to reduce emissions than the US.  Given how urban Europe is, it's a travesty that their per GDP CO2 emissions are even close to a continent spanning distributed population nation like the US. Especially given that a LOT of CO2 emissions come from the processing of natural resources (like refining oil) -- the US is the world's largest producer of oil (most people seem to think Saudi Arabia is -- check out THEIR CO2 emmissions some time).

But let's say the premise was somehow workable. It gave a free pass to China and India.  China is almost certainly already the world's largest polluter in terms of REAL pollutants. Calling CO2 a pollutant is just bizarre. But even there, China will likely be the world's largest producer of CO2 within the next decade or two and they were totally left off this list. 

It's hard enough for US industry to compete against Asian and European nations who have relatively lax air quality laws, but Kyoto would have been a straight jacket on it. The more I read it, the more blatant it seemed to me that it was designed as a way for other countries to gain an economic advantage on the US.

I've also wondered how they track CO2 emissions. You can't do it accurately with satellite monitoring. It's gotta come from industry sources. And I have serious doubts on the accuracy of eastern European, Russian, and Chinese data on these kinds of things.