Rejection of President Bush on 1997 Kyoto Protocol on Global Warming

Presidents and their Doctrines
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US Rejection of the Kyoto Protocol
The 1997 Kyoto protocol on global warming was rejected by President Bush when he came to power in 2001 despite the fact that the treaty had been signed by the Clinton administration. The only remaining thing after the signing of the deal in 1997 was ratified and the Bush administration walked away from the deal, claiming that the treaty would damage the US economy (Smh.com.au, 2002). The deal was supposed to be ratified during the UN global conference in India, but the US climate change negotiator Harlon Watson insisted that the US economy would suffer as a result of ratifying the deal. In addition to that, Watson argued that a depressed US economy would affect economic growth in developing countries because the US was their major export destination. The 1997 Kyoto agreement compelled wealthy and industrialized countries like the US to reduce the emission of up to six greenhouse gases by 2012 (Smh.com.au, 2002). The decision by President Bush to reject the Kyoto Protocol sparked widespread criticism from environmental activists and European countries that supported the treaty.
President Bush claimed that the US was committed to addressing the issue of global arming but at a sustainable level. According to president Bush, major emitters such as China and India did not have any set standards, but the mandates created from the US would cripple the US economy. According to Sanger (2001), there was a great uproar in Europe after Bush rejected the Kyoto protocol. The American delegation at the conference later admitted that they did a poor job in explaining to the delegates the reasons why the US was rejecting the treaty. The 'America First' unilateralism doctrine was revealed for the first by the rejection of the Kyoto treaty, but this doctrine would later be applied in the Iraq war and the war on terror after the 9/11 attacks.
The US Diplomatic efforts in the Kyoto Protocol
The rejection of the Kyoto protocol sparked a diplomatic row between the US and the European Union with the US, claiming that European countries were manipulating the discussion on climate change in order to harm the US. On the other hand, the European Union claimed that the US was only pursuing interests and was not interested in addressing the global warming issue. President Bush advocated for the gradual application of the new technology, but rejected any environmental limit that would hurt the US economy (Sanger, 2001). The US delegation at the India conference tried to convince the other participants to reject the treaty on the sidelines of the conference with very little success. The decision by president Bush received overwhelming support from Business groups in the US that claimed that fast-developing nations would gain an unfair economic advantage as a result of the deal. The Bush administra...