Adopting a 1,000-gigatonne global carbon budget for years 1991 to 2100 and a peak annual carbon emission level of 11 gigatonnes between years 2030 and 2040 will buy the time to develop and deploy low-and zero-carbon emission technologies while deferring the controversial issue of the compliance of developing countries. Henry R. Linden
I. The Kyoto Protocol
his article addresses how to reduce the emissions of carbon dioxide produced in the combustion of fossil fuels-oil, natural gas, and coal-in a less painful way than that called for in the Kyoto Protocol. As most everyone knows, 159 signatory countries to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in June 1992 in Rio de Janeiro reconvened in Kyoto in December 1997 to agree on a protocol for specific reductions of anthropogenic emissions of six so-called "greenhouse gases." The most important are carbon dioxide (CO 2 ), methane (CH 4 ), and nitrous oxide (N 2 0), whose equilibrium between natural sources and sinks has been destabilized by human activities. However, the focus is primarily on CO 2 and CH 4 because increases in their atmospheric concentrations attributed to fossil fuel use, cement production, and land-use changes as of 1992 are held responsible for 83 percent of the so-called "radiative forcing" that is supposedly the cause of the roughly 0.6 Њ C average global surface temperature increase since pre-industrial times. Of this, 64 percent comes from CO 2 and 19 percent from CH 4 . The other three greenhouse gases are engineered chemicals -two