The UN Framework Convention on Climate Change was agreed to in 1992, and ... has been accepted by 181 governments... The developed nations committed themselves to 1990 levels of emissions by the year 2000, but this commitment was not legally binding. For the United States and several other countries, that was just as well, because they came nowhere near meeting it. In the US, for example, by 2000 carbon emissions were 14% higher than they were in 1990. Nor was the trend improving, for the increase between 1999 and 2000 was 3.1%, the biggest one year increase since the mid 1990s.