Kyoto Protocol Signed: 150 Nations Pledge to Cut Emissions
Delegates from 150 countries adopted the Kyoto Protocol on December 11, 1997, after ten days of intense negotiations in Japan. The treaty committed industrialized nations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by an average of 5.2% below 1990 levels by 2012. Developing nations, including China and India, were exempt, a provision that became the treaty's most contentious feature. The United States signed but never ratified it; President Bush withdrew in 2001, calling it 'fatally flawed' because it excluded developing nations. Despite American absence, 192 parties eventually ratified the protocol. Results were mixed: the European Union met its targets, but global emissions continued to rise because exempt nations industrialized rapidly. The Kyoto Protocol established the framework of binding emission targets that was later succeeded by the Paris Agreement in 2015.
December 1, 1997
29 years ago
Key Figures & Places
What Else Happened on December 1
Pope Leo III staggered into St. Peter's, his face still scarred from the Roman mob that tried to gouge out his eyes and cut out his tongue six months earlier. H…
Charlemagne sat in judgment of a pope. The charges against Leo III were serious—perjury, adultery, simony—brought by nephews of his predecessor who'd ambushed h…
Henry V rode through Paris's gates with 300 knights. The French king was alive but mad, locked in his own palace while his son-in-law claimed the throne. No sie…
Henry V paraded through the streets of Paris alongside his father-in-law, Charles VI, asserting his claim to the French throne following the Treaty of Troyes. T…
Queen Elizabeth I knighted her favorites Christopher Hatton and Thomas Heneage during a private ceremony at Windsor Castle. By elevating these men to the knight…
A 46-year-old spymaster with a network stretching from Venice to Constantinople got his knighthood — not for battlefield valor but for intercepting letters. Wal…
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