trol the global air pollution, a joint effort by the national government of all the countries is necessary. As a step towards achieving this objective, an international agreement was signed in December, 1997, in Kyoto, Japan, for voluntary emission control of greenhouse gases. Under this agreement the United States is required to reduce greenhouse gas emission 7% below the 1990 level by the year 2012 ( Kyoto Conference pg. 1 ). Some people think that this will not only reduce air pollution, but also open up the opportunities for the U.S. companies to take a lead in developing environmental improvement technology and give them a competitive advantage in world market. Some, on the other hand, think that this will create a burden on the U.S. economy raising the prices of goods and services, when some of the countries like China, India, and Mexico might not even follow the voluntary restriction of greenhouse gas emission (Passacantando pg. A22 ).In the end, we must realize that though government regulation is one of the important ways of controlling and monitoring air pollution, a lot could be achieved by our own individual actions, such as walking or biking to go short distances, taking mass transit for commuting to and from work, practicing energy conservation, encouraging use of renewable energy, recycling wastes, planting and preserving trees, and last but not the least by taking birth control measures to reduce population growth, particularly, in developing countries....
