Image by Worldwatch Institute, 2006

DENY, DENY, DENY

In 1997 the United Nations updated its UNFCCC treaty to include the Kyoto Protocol “under which industrialized countries will reduce their collective emissions of greenhouse gases by 5.2%3.” This Protocol was formed with the intention of providing international governments with an incentive to positively impact climate change. The United States became one of only five other countries to reject the initiative; although, to be fair, Russia dragged its heels in signing the agreement and the Protocol required much less from developing countries1.

While Europe and its neighbors became more proactive in addressing the threats posed by a global climate change, the United States government tried to ignore the growing problem and kept its public unaware of the threat as well. “So a lot of money was spent in the U.S. to confuse the public, to produce propaganda and spread it around the net,” says Alan Betts, President of the Vermont Academy of Science and Engineering. One of the reasons Europe may have been faster in addressing ways to fight global climate change is because one third of its countries, such as the Netherlands, are below sea-level and “it would cost trillions of dollars going forward, to protect them, if we don’t do something about our greenhouse gas emissions1.”

In the United States, the government allowed big business and oil companies to discredit reports made by their Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. In 2003, Senator James Inhofe even went as far as suggesting that the idea that humans were the main cause of global warming was an enormous hoax8.

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