martin_e said:
Kyoto is a pollution trading protocol. That means, if you are cleaner you can sell your pollution credits and if you are a polluter then you have to buy them from others. This adds a direct financial cost to the products you are importing/exporting based on your ability to cut emissions. This US protocol is simply words, there is no actual incentive to any of the nations involved to cut their emissions.
The US is a very odd country. Individual states (for example California) have excellent records on attempting to cut CO2 emissions, but the federal administration until very recently chose to believe (rough quote from their chief scientific advisor) that Global Warming was a fallacy constructed by other nation's scientists to damage US growth.
No one has proved that Carbon Sinks or similar imaginary technology could/would work. What has been proven is that unless action is taken to cut emissions NOW! then the problem will spiral even more out of control than it already is. The US treaty does not address the urgent need to shift world reliance from oil to renewable energies... and therefore will kill millions over the next 30-50 years.
martin e,
I am very supportive of emissions trading schemes and am aware that the Kyoto protocol attempts to bring in an element of emmissions trading. However, when a signatory country fails to reach it's targets and is then required to purchase the right to the extra pollution, what will happen if they refuse to buy these credits? Operating as it does in the arena of international politics Kyoto is also mainly reliant on goodwill, as it will, in all probability lack the teeth to bring signatory countries to account.
But I must say that I support the Kyoto agreement and of course believe that it is a shame that the US is not on board. However, even if it were, China would not be, and this is obviously a big problem. I am optmistic that this latest agreement can work as a compliment to the Kyoto agreement rather than as an antagonistic force.
Finally, do you believe that the EU countries are doing enough to develop cleaner energy technologies, and is it a good thing that the US is investing so heavily in them?
(One thing I think is always important to bear in mind with these kind of international, cross border issues is the problem of collective action that they embody, and that makes them so hard to address. Politics is the art of the possible after all).
