Kyoto Protocol

After many failed attempts to get everyone on board the "let’s stop killing the Earth, k?" train, we have ourselves the Kyoto Protocol...which basically ended up being another attempt to save our planet...and that’s about it. While lots of countries signed it, it was notable that the U.S. did not.

The Kyoto Protocol was more symbolic than it was action-oriented, but it was still considered a big deal, since lots of countries signed it. By signing, countries were agreeing to reduce carbon dioxide and greenhouse gas emissions via a cap-and-trade system.

Getting everyone to emit less crapitude is tough, since every individual country is not incentivized to do it. In the struggle for power, emitting less is the last thing any country wants to focus on, so...yeah. Not easy.

For the Kyoto metrics then, how did they decide who gets to emit how much? In general, there were Annex I countries (the wealthy countries) and Non-Annex I countries (not so wealthy). The Annex I countries had a cap placed on them, since they already, uh...had their cake.