If the plan had gone ahead, the US would have been responsible for much of the reform in the industrialized world. In 1990, the US was responsible for 48 percent of the developed world's carbon emissions, but it would be responsible for 64 percent of the Kyoto reductions. This calculation, however, only tells part of the story. The Europe that has been so scathing about the American decision is actually by far the biggest culprit in the emissions field.
This is because Kyoto did not take account of a crucial scientific fact. Carbon dioxide is not really a pollutant, as the Environmental Protection Agency has labeled it. It is a vitally important contributor to plant life, which uses much of the gas in the atmosphere. Geographic areas with large amounts of plant life therefore act as "carbon sinks," sucking in carbon dioxide from the air.
A scientific paper published in October 1998 ("A Large Terrestrial Carbon Sink in North America Implied by Atmospheric and Oceanic Carbon Dioxide Data and Models," Fan et al, Science, Vol. 282, p. 442 ff.) concluded that the North American continent acted as a huge carbon sink, absorbing about 1.7 billion metric tons of atmospheric carbon dioxide per year. As North America is responsible for only about 1.6 billion tons of carbon emissions per year, the continent is actually a net consumer of carbon dioxide.