Times Touts Record U.S. Emissions, Ignores Failure of Other Nations

     Ringing alarm bells about record greenhouse gas emissions, New York Times reporter Andrew Revkin opened his December 21 article noting the U.S. Energy Department reports U.S. emissions linked to global warming reached an all-time high in 2004 nearly double the average annual rate measured since 1990. But Revkin failed to note that the U.S. performed better than Kyoto Protocol signatory Canada or that former enthusiastic boosters of Kyoto like Britains Tony Blair now find the treaty unrealistic.

     Using 1990 as the base year, Canada's emissions are now 24 percent higher, while the United States is up by 14 percent, said Elizabeth May, executive director for the Sierra Club in Canada, in a November 27 New York Times article. May added, The United States' performance is superior to Canada's, even though it is outside Kyoto.

     The November 27 Clifford Krauss piece, filed on the eve of a climate change summit held in Ottawa., added that when it signed the Kyoto agreement, Canada agreed to reduce its output of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases by 6 percent below 1990 levels from 2008 to 2012.

     Even the expert Revkin showcased, Lord Martin Rees of the United Kingdoms Royal Society, noted that Britain's emissions had also risen in the last two years. Reess home country also was also party to the Kyoto climate change treaty. "We should not underestimate the challenge of achieving economic growth whilst reducing emissions, Rees said, and the United States is not the only country that is struggling to do this.

     Critics of Kyoto such as Competitive Enterprise Institutes Myron Ebell and Iain Murray have long predicted the failure of Kyoto Treaty nations to live up to the dictates of the treaty,  and in September, British Prime Minister Tony Blair startled the British press with his candid confession that Kyoto was unworkable. No country is going to cut its growth or consumption substantially, said the three-term British premier.

     The Business & Media Institute previously has documented how the media have skewed climate change coverage to gloss over the costs the treaty imposes on countries which have adopted it.