Here's an interesting line in a Reuters item, (
Poor nations brake greenhouse gas rise: U.N. draft - Yahoo! News ), paragraph 6 -
President George W. Bush pulled the United States out of Kyoto in 2001, arguing it would cost U.S. jobs and that it wrongly excluded 2012 goals for poorer nations such as China.
Those up on their recent history may recall that S.Res 98, the Byrd-Hagel Resolution, informed then-President Clinton that, should the Kyoto Protocol be submitted to the Senate for consideration, it would not be approved. Byrd-Hagel passed 95 to 0. Al Gore signed the Protocol, but lacking ratification, that was of little significance. Clinton never submitted it to the Senate. He just pretended that it wasn't dead. Bush simply stopped pretending that it wasn't dead. Gore's signature is, naturally enough, still on it.
So US non-participation in Kyoto has nothing to do with Bush, and never did. The US never "withdrew"; it was never in it in the first place. Reuters might claim some wriggle room there, as the US is a "signatory" in the sense that Gore's unratified sig is on it. But if that's so, then it's still "in", as Gore's sig is still there.
The argument about US jobs and the exclusions of goals for developing nations were arguments offered by the Senate several years before Bush became president.
