US-China Relations and the Fate of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change: Traditional Conservatism as an Ideological and Cultural Constraint on US Participation in a Successor to the Kyoto Protocol on Chinese Terms

Abstract

The Kyoto Protocol to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), which the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has ratified but the United States has not, imposes legally binding greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reduction requirements only on developed countries, and only through 2012. Like most less developed countries, the PRC has insisted that only developed countries should be required to limit their GHG emissions as a matter of international law under any successor to the Kyoto Protocol. American traditional conservatives repeatedly have cited the lack of legally binding international limits on the PRC’s own emissions as a principal reason for not ratifying the Kyoto Protocol or binding the United States to any successor accord with similar terms. Many observers regard an accommodation between the United States and