With election nearing, Kyoto protocol raises its head again.

In March, a Clinton Administration environmental priority resurfaced in a Government Accounting Office (GAO) investigation requested by Sens. Ernest Hollings (D-S.C.) and John Kerry (D-Mass.) They asked the GAO (the investigative ann of Congress) to determine why two economic studies (both conducted by administration agencies in 1998 on the costs of implementing the international Kyoto Treaty) reached vastly different conclusions. The Bush Administration used the more expensive of the two studies as an argument for opposing the treaty.

In December 1997, the U.S. participated in drafting the Kyoto Treaty, an international agreement to specifically limit greenhouse gas emissions. While imposing severe restrictions on the U.S., the treaty did not impose limits on emissions from developing nations (such as China, India and Brazil). Additionally, many in the science and business community rejected the science behind the treaty. Although the U.S. government signed the treaty in 1998, the Clinton Administration did not submit it to the Senate for advice and consent, which are necessary for ratification. In March 2001, President Bush announced that he opposed the Kyoto Treaty and would not seek its implementation.

The two studies called into question were a 1998 look at the Kyoto costs conducted by the Energy Information Administration, an independent statistical and analytical agency within the U.S. Dept. of Energy, which estimated the cost at $397 billion to U.S. businesses. The other, a 1998 estimate prepared by the White House Council of Economic Advisers, concluded that the costs of implementing the protocol could be "as little as $7-12 billion a year in economic output, depending on the extent of international emissions trading allowed and the participation of developing countries."

According to GAO's report, there were two likely reasons the cost estimates differed. First, the economic models focused on different time periods with different assumptions about how the economy adjusts to new policies. Secondly, the models measure costs differently.