Ride a bicycle instead of driving a car.

Think twice before you buy any products.

Buy household products that are ecological and designed for low energy usage.

These are suggestions often aired on TV commercials broadcast in Japan. Ecology and concern for the environment are key, and are becoming everyday parts of the Japanese lifestyle.

Japanese consumers are becoming more and more aware of the call for carbon dioxide reduction at the local level, in addition to attending regularly scheduled symposiums and forums on issues related to the environment. Japanese TV commercials call for the audiences to purchase ecological household products designed in an effort to collaborate with the Kyoto Protocol.

The government encourages the development of more eco-friendly and energy saving technologies, such as electric, gasoline hybrid automobiles.

In February, 141 nations signed the Kyoto Protocol, an agreement aimed at reducing carbon dioxide emissions and curbing the effects of global warming. Many scientists around the world agree that global warming is a serious problem that needs to be addressed.

The Environmental Protection Agency reports, “rising global temperatures are expected to raise sea level, change precipitation … affect human health … and affect many types of ecosystems.”

Yet absent from the agreement is the United States of America, the world’s largest emitter of carbon dioxide and gases that harm the environment, according to Asahi Shinbun, a Japanese national paper.
One estimate expects the United States and China to produce 37 percent of the world’s carbon dioxide in 2010.

Incidentally, Japan produces less than 4 percent of world’s total, according to the same source. The United States chose not to enter the agreement out of fear that it would “harm the economy, and because the agreement is flawed by the lack of restrictions on the emerging economies of China and India,” according to CNN.

Unfortunately, the Bush administration’s environmental record makes it clear the United States will not be joining this agreement anytime soon. The Natural Resources Defense Council writes in their assessment of the Bush administration’s first-term environmental policy, “an almost daily barrage of weakening policy changes over the last four years threatens decades of hard-won environmental progress.”

The council reported that the Bush administration is “moving to legalize the dumping of untreated sewage into U.S. waterways … and the loosening of environmental reviews,” among other environmental setbacks.

The United States’ non-participation in the Kyoto Protocol is indicative of the lax and careless environmental policy of the current administration. The United States has an opportunity to lead the world in attempting to remedy environmental concerns, yet it does nothing.

How can countries such as China and India be expected to join the pact when the world’s largest emitter of harmful gases, the United States, has not joined? To place the economy in front of global concerns such as the environment and public health and safety is both selfish and reckless.

The United States has the opportunity to be a pioneer and leader in environmental policy, but instead has decided to turn its back on the rest of the world.

Once again, the current administration has made a unilateral decision that compromises the safety, well-being, and health of the rest of the globe. Not having a car would be unrealistic in this country, however other countries are also risking and compromising their lifestyles to fight against the global warming.

As a world leader, America’s absence from the Kyoto Protocol is haphazard and unfortunate.