AP Still Gets Kyoto History Wrong

Earlier this year, I noted that the Associated Press either did a poor job of research or revealed their bias against the Bush administration by incorrectly recounting the history of the Kyoto Treaty in the US. They used the Left’s talking points in reporting that the present administration rejected Kyoto and had the responsibility for the lack of its implementation. Jim Krane apparently isn’t alone at the AP in passing along misinformation, as CQ reader Jal Ark noticed:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (news, bio, voting record) said Monday she led a congressional delegation to Greenland, where lawmakers saw “firsthand evidence that climate change is a reality,” and she hoped the Bush administration would consider a new path on the issue. …
Her trip comes ahead of next week’s Group of Eight summit and a climate change meeting next month involving the leading industrialized nations and during a time of increased debate over what should succeed the Kyoto Protocol, a 1997 international treaty that caps the amount of carbon dioxide that can be emitted from power plants and factories in industrialized countries. It expires in 2012.
President Bush rejected that accord, saying it would harm the U.S. economy and unfair excludes developing countries like China and India from its obligations. Pelosi, who strongly disagrees with that decision and many other of Bush’s environmental policies, said Friday she said she wants to work with the administration rather than provoke it.

Once again, the AP has failed to report the history of this treaty correctly. While Bush does not support the Kyoto approach, he had nothing to do with rejecting the pact. The Senate rejected it in 1997, almost four years before Bush took office. When Al Gore pushed Bill Clinton to sign the treaty, the Senate reacted by passing a resolution informing Clinton that Kyoto would not get ratified.
That resolution got sponsored by Chuck Hagel and Robert Byrd, and it passed by a roll call vote in which not a single Senator voted to support Clinton and Gore. The final vote was 95-0, and it included such Democratic luminaries as Ted Kennedy, John Kerry, and Barbara Boxer rejecting Kyoto. I have the resolution itself in the extended entry, and it makes clear that the Senate would not abide a pact which excluded the developing nations of China and India. Since it still does not include those countries, there is no reason to think that the Senate has changed its position, nor should it.
Even if I hadn’t already written about this, I could have found this in about ten seconds simply by doing a search of the Internet. The Wikipedia entry is well-researched, and even an advocacy group manages to get this correct. Why can’t the AP? Now that two of their reporters have found it impossible to accurately recount the history, it seems less likely that it reflects incompetence and more likely that it reflects a bias — especially since that vaunted system of fact-checking and editorial oversight has once again allowed misinformation into print.


105th CONGRESS
1st Session
S. RES. 98
[Report No. 105-54]
Expressing the sense of the Senate regarding the conditions for the United States becoming a signatory to any international agreement on greenhouse gas emissions under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.
IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES
July 25, 1997
Mr. BYRD (for himself, Mr. HAGEL, Mr. HOLLINGS, Mr. CRAIG, Mr. INOUYE, Mr. WARNER, Mr. FORD, Mr. THOMAS, Mr. DORGAN, Mr. HELMS, Mr. LEVIN, Mr. ROBERTS, Mr. ABRAHAM, Mr. MCCONNELL, Mr. ASHCROFT, Mr. BROWNBACK, Mr. KEMPTHORNE, Mr. THURMOND, Mr. BURNS, Mr. CONRAD, Mr. GLENN, Mr. ENZI, Mr. INHOFE, Mr. BOND, Mr. COVERDELL, Mr. DEWINE, Mrs. HUTCHISON, Mr. GORTON, Mr. HATCH, Mr. BREAUX, Mr. CLELAND, Mr. DURBIN, Mr. HUTCHINSON, Mr. JOHNSON, Ms. LANDRIEU, Ms. MIKULSKI, Mr. NICKLES, Mr. SANTORUM, Mr. SHELBY, Mr. SMITH of Oregon, Mr. BENNETT, Mr. FAIRCLOTH, Mr. FRIST, Mr. GRASSLEY, Mr. ALLARD, Mr. MURKOWSKI, Mr. AKAKA, Mr. COATS, Mr. COCHRAN, Mr. DOMENICI, Mr. GRAMM, Mr. GRAMS, Mr. LOTT, Ms. MOSELEY-BRAUN, Mr. ROBB, Mr. ROCKEFELLER, Mr. SESSIONS, Mr. SMITH of New Hampshire, Mr. SPECTER, Mr. STEVENS, Mr. LUGAR, Mr. REID, Mr. BRYAN, Mr. THOMPSON, and Mr. CAMPBELL) submitted the following resolution; which was referred to the Committee on Foreign Relations
July 21, 1997
Reported by Mr. HELMS, without amendment
July 25, 1997
Considered and agreed to
RESOLUTION
Expressing the sense of the Senate regarding the conditions for the United States becoming a signatory to any international agreement on greenhouse gas emissions under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.
Whereas the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (in this resolution referred to as the `Convention’), adopted in May 1992, entered into force in 1994 and is not yet fully implemented;
Whereas the Convention, intended to address climate change on a global basis, identifies the former Soviet Union and the countries of Eastern Europe and the Organization For Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), including the United States, as `Annex I Parties’, and the remaining 129 countries, including China, Mexico, India, Brazil, and South Korea, as `Developing Country Parties’;
Whereas in April 1995, the Convention’s `Conference of the Parties’ adopted the so-called `Berlin Mandate’;
Whereas the `Berlin Mandate’ calls for the adoption, as soon as December 1997, in Kyoto, Japan, of a protocol or another legal instrument that strengthens commitments to limit greenhouse gas emissions by Annex I Parties for the post-2000 period and establishes a negotiation process called the `Ad Hoc Group on the Berlin Mandate’;
Whereas the `Berlin Mandate’ specifically exempts all Developing Country Parties from any new commitments in such negotiation process for the post-2000 period;
Whereas although the Convention, approved by the United States Senate, called on all signatory parties to adopt policies and programs aimed at limiting their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, in July 1996 the Undersecretary of State for Global Affairs called for the first time for `legally binding’ emission limitation targets and timetables for Annex I Parties, a position reiterated by the Secretary of State in testimony before the Committee on Foreign Relations of the Senate on January 8, 1997;
Whereas greenhouse gas emissions of Developing Country Parties are rapidly increasing and are expected to surpass emissions of the United States and other OECD countries as early as 2015;
Whereas the Department of State has declared that it is critical for the Parties to the Convention to include Developing Country Parties in the next steps for global action and, therefore, has proposed that consideration of additional steps to include limitations on Developing Country Parties’ greenhouse gas emissions would not begin until after a protocol or other legal instrument is adopted in Kyoto, Japan in December 1997;
Whereas the exemption for Developing Country Parties is inconsistent with the need for global action on climate change and is environmentally flawed;
Whereas the Senate strongly believes that the proposals under negotiation, because of the disparity of treatment between Annex I Parties and Developing Countries and the level of required emission reductions, could result in serious harm to the United States economy, including significant job loss, trade disadvantages, increased energy and consumer costs, or any combination thereof; and
Whereas it is desirable that a bipartisan group of Senators be appointed by the Majority and Minority Leaders of the Senate for the purpose of monitoring the status of negotiations on Global Climate Change and reporting periodically to the Senate on those negotiations: Now, therefore, be it
Resolved, That it is the sense of the Senate that–
(1) the United States should not be a signatory to any protocol to, or other agreement regarding, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change of 1992, at negotiations in Kyoto in December 1997, or thereafter, which would–
(A) mandate new commitments to limit or reduce greenhouse gas emissions for the Annex I Parties, unless the protocol or other agreement also mandates new specific scheduled commitments to limit or reduce greenhouse gas emissions for Developing Country Parties within the same compliance period, or
(B) would result in serious harm to the economy of the United States; and
(2) any such protocol or other agreement which would require the advice and consent of the Senate to ratification should be accompanied by a detailed explanation of any legislation or regulatory actions that may be required to implement the protocol or other agreement and should also be accompanied by an analysis of the detailed financial costs and other impacts on the economy of the United States which would be incurred by the implementation of the protocol or other agreement.
SEC. 2. The Secretary of the Senate shall transmit a copy of this resolution to the President.

17 thoughts on “AP Still Gets Kyoto History Wrong”

  1. The MSM claim to superiority over bloggers was their professional fact checkers, was it not? No wonder the papers are sinking fast – it’s tough to beat “more accurate and free” on the web.

  2. “President Bush rejected that accord, saying it would harm the U.S. economy and unfair excludes developing countries like China and India…” (emphasis mine)
    Not only do the “layers of editors and fact-checkers” not edit out false claims, they can’t even be bothered to check simple grammar, apparently.

  3. Why can’t the AP writers get the facts right? Because they are not journalists, they are journalistas, advocating an agenda rather than reporting the facts. If the facts get in the way of their agenda, then they will be jettisoned. After all, most of the sheeple will believe what they read in the papers. If the AP says it’s so, then by golly, it MUST be true! Alas, many people aren’t bright enough or well-informed enough to see past the squid-spray of ink that the AP and its MSM minions put out.

  4. I make the point here that Pelosi’s global warming tour comes at a time when the consensus that liberals were talking about is falling apart because many of the myths have been debunked by scholars like Michael Crichton.

  5. I read blogs and their posts with a simple variant of Godwin’s Law in mind. As soon as somebody uses the word “sheeple” I know they want to control humanity, which they despise.
    They may still be right, but I factor their contempt into my reading.

  6. Pelosi’s the new Daschle????

    Not hardly. The new Daschle is Harry Reid, right down to being the next Majority Leader to get defeated. Unfortunately, we’ll have to wait until 2010 to defeat him.
    The latest poll in Nevada that I saw shows his approval rating hovering around 40%. Don’t be surprised if he ‘retires’ rather than get defeated.

  7. Nancy Pelosi has indicated that the melting of the Greenland ice is a sign of impending global disaster. For about 300 years, Greenland was warm enough that Viking farmers colonized it successfully. Curiously, there was not a climate crisis around the globe when Greenland was warm back then.
    Then the ice sheet spread and the villages declined and were abondoned. The Viking farmers probably felt the the climate crisis was the expanding ice sheet in Greenland. Silly farmers!

  8. Bush is the enemy. Bush has always been the enemy. Bush is opposed to Kyoto. Therefore Bush has always been responsible for its failure. Failure to recognize this is Thought Crime. It is thereby perfectly reasonable to vilify Bush for his responsibility in making the Senate to vote against Kyoto in 1997.

  9. Maybe I am biased from the other side, but when I wrote my chapter on environmentalism for the World Ahead book Thank You President Bush, I began by noting that his first major policy statement was an assertion that we were abandoning the Kyoto framework. You have to remember that, while the Senate voted overwhelmingly against Kyoto, the Clinton/Gore administration continued to work furiously in support of Kyoto, and many congressmen were talking about working to make the Kyoto protocol workable. (Gore signed the protocol after the Senate voted 95-0 against signing it.) Kyoto may have had no chance of ratification, but it was Bush who pulled the plug.
    AP is certainly wrong to suggest that President Bush was bucking Congress when he nixed Kyoto (as seems to be the implication when they only cite Pelosi’s opposition) but they are right to give him credit for ending the fantasy that Kyoto could be made workable.
    Thank You President Bush.

  10. Discover Magazine has long mis-represented Kyoto in this same way. When I called them on it a few years ago, an editor wrote back saying we can’t blame the Senate because the treaty was never submitted for ratification. Until it is, it’s the President’s responsibility. And while he allowed it was unfortunate that Clinton never did so (I wonder why?), it was Bush who officially pulled the treaty, and therefore Bush was to blame.
    I let my subscription lapse shortly thereafter. Pity, too, because it used to be such a good magazine.

  11. “…it was Bush who officially pulled the treaty, and therefore Bush was to blame.”
    Shouldn’t he have said, “…therefore Bush gets the credit.” 🙂 I know I’m grateful every day that Kyoto stays off these shores.
    And congrats on giving up your subscription, Gene. Lots of formerly good magazines seem to have been taken over by editors with a political agenda that poisons much of what they do. Perhaps the only way they will get the message that many readers are dissatisfied with that turn of events is to hit them in the pocketbook. No guarantees, of course. Some probably will remain stuck on stupid no matter what.

  12. I wrote to complain about that very item, using the click through email address (info@ap.org) provided on AP’s website. It was bounced right back for “permanent fatal errors” in the address.
    Looks like they just don’t want to hear it!

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