WHEN the Kyoto Protocol was first signed, it was met with joy...

Another story on the recent implementation of the Kyoto Protocol...

WHEN the Kyoto Protocol was first signed, it was met with joy and excitement throughout the world. The 1997 agreement pledged its signatory countries to implementing programs against global warming. With the world weather patterns increasingly reminding the world that global warming is a real phenomenon, the wisdom of the global effort that resulted in the Kyoto agreement has been validated.

However, the United States, the largest energy consumer in the world, which accounts for a significant percentage of the planet's greenhouse gases, withdrew from the Kyoto Protocol during George W. Bush's first term. The decision of the American Republican administration was met with outrage throughout the world: not least because previous (Democratic) American administrations had been at the forefront of the lobbying for the agreement.

The Kyoto accord establishes, as global policy, the directive that the use of fossil fuels should be accompanied by strict emission standards and by a serious effort to develop more fuel-efficient technologies, as well as energy substitutes that reduce greenhouse gases. Obviously such policies endanger the healthy profits of oil companies, car manufacturers and electricity producers, all of which were significant contributors to the Bush campaign.

It is, therefore, no exaggeration to say that the official American about-face with regard to Kyoto was a matter of business. Long ago, an American president, Calvin Coolidge, said "America's business is business." Just as the American obsession with business interests and its inherent tendency to be isolationist torpedoed America's participation in the League of Nations (the post-World War I precursor to the United Nations) in the 1920s, so too does the withdrawal of Republican support from the Kyoto accord and the International Criminal Court show that American idealism tends to play second fiddle to American profiteering.

It's been said that America's turning its back on the League of Nations led to the unchallenged rise of fascism. America's ambivalence toward the UN after World War II has also led to an uneven American engagement with the global community. There is an American saying: "All politics is local." And the Bush administration's turning its back on two immensely important global agreements, the Kyoto Protocol and the International Criminal Court, shows as much.

The world community, faced with what could have been a catastrophic American withdrawal from the Kyoto agreement, decided to go on without the United States. It helped that emerging global economic and military powers, such as the People's Republic of China, saw that environmental protection cannot be separated from sustainable economic growth. The European Union, Japan and the emerging powers-such as India, China and Brazil- continue to be dedicated to the spirit of the Kyoto agreement. So does the Philippines, which has been feeling, deeply and painfully, the price of environmental mismanagement.

Energy Secretary Vince Perez hailed the most recent accession to the Kyoto Protocol by the Russian Federation. He recently announced new government initiatives seeking clean indigenous energy resources, and he said the government is keen on the development and commercial utilization of renewable energy. These government programs aim to promote clean alternative transport fuels and to enhance energy efficiency as well as conservation efforts to ensure sustainable energy development in the country.

On the surface at least, the country is on the right track. While it took five years (from 1998 to 2003) for our country to ratify the Kyoto accord, the fact is we did. As did so many other nations. This only goes to show that the tantalizing possibility of America increasingly getting left behind by the combined efforts of other countries may be upon us.

It may be a passing era when the United States could call the shots virtually at will in the global scene. America is powerful, but rivals are rising to the fore. America will be a crucial world player for generations to come; but it must increasingly adopt to the possibility of its remaining to be an important power bloc, but just one of many. Be that as it may, it's good to see that our country remains where it does best: not simply following the American Pied Piper, but discovering there is wisdom and strength in collective global engagement.