The scientific evidence continues to mount suggesting that fossil fuel use is causing apotentially disastrous warming of Earth's atmosphere. But governments are still far from agreement on the best way to solve the problem. Three years after more than 150 countries signed the Kyoto Protocol agreeing to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide and other “greenhouse gases” implicated in global warming, no industrialized country has ratified the treaty. Prospects for prompt action dimmed in November when talks in the Netherlands aimed at implementing the protocol broke down amid charges that the United States -- the world's biggest greenhouse-gas polluter -- was seeking to exploit loopholes in the Kyoto treaty in order to avoid changing its energy-consumption habits.

Mary H. Cooper specializes in environmental, energy and defense issues. Before joining CQ Researcher as a staff writer in 1983, she was a reporter and Washington correspondent for the Rome daily newspaper l'Unita. She is the author of The Business of Drugs (CQ Press, 1990). She also is a contract translator-interpreter for the U.S. State Department. Cooper graduated from Hollins College in English.