Kyoto Protocol Ratified; or, It's alive!

The French news service, Agence France-Presse (AFP), made available two articles announcing that Russia had delivered its ratification of the Kyoto Protocol to the UN.

The first was an essentially neutral news report, but the second was written as a "good guys and bad guys" story of the birth of a treaty.

President Bush's name didn't appear in the neutral report, but he is clearly depicted as the bad guy in the second.

Here are excerpts from the first article:

AFP--Thursday November 18, 8:23 PM

Kyoto Protocol to take effect from Feb 16

The Kyoto Protocol to combat global warming will take effect from February 16, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) announced after Russia formally handed over its instrument of ratification.

"The protocol will become legally binding on its 128 Parties on February 16 2005," the UNFCCC said in a statement received here, released after Russia handed the document to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan in Nairobi.

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"A period of uncertainty has closed. Climate change is ready to take its place at the top of the global agenda," said Joke Waller-Hunter, executive secretary of the UNFCCC's secretariat.

Russia's move removed a years-long question mark over the future of the landmark agreement, which aims to curb carbon gas pollution blamed for disturbing the Earth's climate system.

Kyoto's framework was agreed in 1997 but it took four years to agree its complex rulebook.

In 2001, the United States walked away from Kyoto, saying the cost for meeting its targets would be too high for the US economy, which is massively dependent on the fossil fuels that are at the source of the problem.

It also said Kyoto was unfair, because only industrialised nations -- and not fast-growing developing ones such as India and China -- have to make targeted emissions cuts under the pact's 2008-12 timeframe.

Waller-Hunter noted that only four industrialised countries have yet to ratify the Kyoto Protocol -- Australia, Liechtenstein, Monaco and the United States.

Australia has followed America in saying that it will not ratify Kyoto.

Together, those two countries account for more than a third of greenhouse gases emitted by the industrialised world.

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US abandonment stripped Kyoto of the world's biggest producer of carbon gases and left the treaty on the brink of collapse.

Russia's ratification was necessary for Kyoto to survive.

Its ratification clauses require a minimum threshold of approval by polluting industrial signatories for it to be transformed from a draft agreement into a full-fledged treaty.

Note how the action was described as having been taken by the United States, which is consistent with the facts.

Both the President and the Senate (by a vote of 95-0) agreed that the Kyoto Protocol was a fatally flawed treaty which the United States should not ratify.

During the Clinton administration, the U.S. signed the protocol with the stated desire to work with the other parties to modify it enough to make it acceptable.

After more than three years of futile efforts at changing it, President Bush decided that further efforts would be a waste of time--and so notified the other parties.

Here are excerpts from the second article:

AFP--Thursday November 18, 11:19 PM

After seven-year gestation, Kyoto Protocol set to be born

The Kyoto Protocol, the UN's long-troubled pact for combatting global warming, finally got the green light, with February 16 announced as the date when it will become a binding treaty.

Bedevilled for years by bitter negotiations and a US walkout, Kyoto will take effect just under three months from now, after Russia, in a ceremony in Nairobi, handed the UN legal instruments declaring it had ratified the accord.

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The move comes nearly seven years after Kyoto's framework was agreed by the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) -- the offshoot of the 1992 Rio Summit designed to tackle Earth's worsening environmental crisis.

It took four further years of haggling to decide Kyoto's rulebook, a thick and complex volume that includes several revolutionary, but never-tested, ideas for combatting global warming.

During that time, Kyoto's political future was almost destroyed by US President George W. Bush.

In March 2001, in one of his first acts after taking office, Bush said his country, even though it had signed the 1997 framework agreement, would not ratify the outcome.

He said the cost of meeting Kyoto's commitments would be too high for the US economy, dependent on the oil, gas and coal whose burning releases carbon dioxide gas, causing a "greenhouse effect" that is causing the atmosphere to warm.

Bush also branded Kyoto as unfair, because only industrialised nations -- and not fast-growing developing ones such as India and China which are now big polluters -- have to make targeted emissions cuts under the pact's timeframe.

Developing countries are being given financial help to avoid joining the path of fossil pollution and to help cope with the effects of climate change.

US abandonment stripped Kyoto of the world's biggest producer of greenhouse gases, accounting by itself for a quarter of the global total.

Only adroit action by the European Union saved the treaty, but even so, Russia's ratification remained necessary for Kyoto to take effect.

Its clauses require a minimum threshold of ratification by polluting industrial signatories for it to be transformed from a draft agreement into a full-fledged treaty.

Only four industrialised countries -- the microstates Liechtenstein and Monaco, plus Australia and United States -- now remain outside Kyoto.

The treaty is portrayed in the headline as a living being that is nearing the time of its birth, while President Bush is depicted in the article as the person who tried to kill it.

Note that the first article described the objections raised by the executive and legislative branches as simply the position of the U.S., while the second depicts these objections as Bush's opinions.

Students of journalism might benefit from studying these two examples of how a news story can be reported--unless, of course, they come away from the case study with a preference for the propagandistic version.