roffle(tm, if you dont understand it, say it three times out loud very quickly), i didnt know karma could hit the negatives.

Does anyone have any CLUE as to how expensive it will be to reduce all emissions 8%?

Not nearly so much as you think. Every time environmental regulations are imposed, people say that the economy will tank as a result. It just doesn't happen.

For instance, when CFCs were banned, some companies discovered they could use water or lemon juice in place of CFCs and actually wound up saving money, and the economy wasn't hurt by the end of CFCs either. Congress imposed new mileage restrictions during the oil crisis and while Japanese car makers innovated to meet them, American car makers sued and didn't. The result was it helped the Japanese to seize a huge portion of the global car market, causing major harm to the American economy. Business has cried wolf too many times about this sort of thing; everytime it turns out it's better for them to quit their whining and find a way to make money and help the environment.

The long-term trend is toward getting more and more $GDP out of a certain amount of fossil fuel anyway, and a large portion of Kyoto is just to give this an international shove forward. A lot of fossil fuel is burned pointlessly in the US. Emissions could be reduced substantially IMHO if SUVs had to meet real fuel economy standards and the nation's railways and mass transit systems were adequately funded and upgraded. Also, US reliance on foreign oil has never done anything good for it, and alternative energy sources offer the only way out. Kyoto would definitely encourage them, so from a political as well as environmental standpoint Kyoto makes sense. The treaty is good for the US, it just takes foresight to see it.