Kyoto Flawed?

[SugarBee]

The Monitor's View Tue Dec 6, 3:00 AM ET

 

One flaw in the Kyoto treaty is that its legal targets to cut greenhouse gas emissions, set in 1997, were mainly guesswork. Now many nations that signed onto it will likely not meet their targets for 2008-2012. Hopes of a new pact may go up in smoke.

 

What's needed at talks for a post-Kyoto treaty that began last week in Montreal is a new realism. Kyoto's successor must match the level of popular urgency about climate change to both the people's willingness for economic sacrifice and to reliable estimates of the costs of technological fixes. It was that mismatch in the Kyoto treaty that has hurt its promise - not the bipartisan rejection by the Clinton-era US Senate and later

President Bush, or the lack of India and China as part of the treaty.

 

Kyoto's designers underestimated the obstacles to scrubbing carbon dioxide and other climate- altering gases from human activities. (It's not the first time that modern idealism has gone amuck on human behavior.) Now, the dashed hopes of Kyoto's success could damage the momentum for a new international consensus to come to grips with global warming and its possible human causes.

 

A greater admission of Kyoto's failures should be the first step toward regaining traction. The Washington-based Pew Center on Global Climate Change, for one, has found Kyoto flawed. The

European Commission, while still hoping its nations can meet the target of reducing greenhouse gases by 8 percent below 1990 levels, concedes the continent has made little progress. The EC estimates that reductions will be down by only 1.6 percent by 2010.

 

Canada's most-recent data shows emissions were up 24 percent above 1990 levels, hardly the kind of progress needed to meet its target of 6 percent below 1990 levels. Japan is expected to have a 12 percent increase by 2010.

 

Better a treaty than no treaty, one might say. But the prospect of so many Kyoto violators puts in question the whole idea of a new global treaty that once again would commit nations to change their polluting businesses and transportation.

 

An alternative pushed by Mr. Bush is voluntary action by businesses, backed by government research and incentives toward clean energy. The US also put together a coalition last June with China, India, Japan,South Korea, and Australia to share their clean-energy research.

 

The pace of such voluntary efforts, however, will likely be meager against the pace of global warming (not that a successful Kyoto would have done much either). The US has not slowed down its average rate of increase in greenhouse gas emissions.

 

Cobbling together a post-Kyoto plan of global action will not be easy. China and India at least are now looped into action through the clean-energy coalition. Many states in the US plan to coerce businesses to clean up. And many global businesses, wary of uncertain emissions regulations, actually want firm plans. Insurance companies, too, would like a long-range look at whether humanity can rise to the challenge of keeping major climate disaster at bay.

 

Compromise between Europe, the US, and poor nations might be in the air. But it will be tough to find until the air is cleaned of Kyoto's missteps.

[Speckled Frost]

To gain any significant progress in cutting down on pollution isn't going to come voluntarily - particularly if it involved any economic sacrifice on the part of these businesses.

 

The Kyoto agreement may have been a little unrealistic but it provided focuss which Bush's poxy piecemeal approach will never achieve.

 

He's a twat and the US should come up with something better to justify it's disgraceful approach.

[Charles Flynn]

Just a reminder that DOLGE have organised a general presentation on a project to identify and prioritise the impacts of Climate Change and what it will mean for the Island on Wednesday, 14thDecember, at the Manx Museum.

This will be followed by a Workshop on Thursday for key stakeholders to improve an understanding of climate change; to begin to identify the climate risks on the Island and to identify and agree some next steps for addressing climate change and who should take these forward.

 

On Friday there follows a Climate Change Scoping Study Steering Group Meeting to take matters forward.

[b4mbi]

read "State of Fear" ficitonal work but gives rise to very interesting issues regarding "global warming" and the Kyoto treaty.

 

And it's a cracking read too!

[cheesemonster2005]

To gain any significant progress in cutting down on pollution isn't going to come voluntarily - particularly if it involved any economic sacrifice on the part of these businesses.

 

The Kyoto agreement may have been a little unrealistic but it provided focuss which Bush's poxy piecemeal approach will never achieve.

 

He's a twat and the US should come up with something better to justify it's disgraceful approach.

 

Unfortunately as the USA is regarded as a super power with enormous influence many countries will follow their lead. If the US doesn't try to reduce emissions then other countries will also be less inclined to. Without the USA on board reductions will have little effect - though they will have some which is better than nothing.

 

Tony Blair has suggested the building of more nuclear power stations to reduce pollution caused by fossil fuels. I've always been against nuclear power but if it can be proven to be safe, protected against terrorism and shown to be environmentally-friendly then maybe it's an option. What do yez think?

[Charles Flynn]

There are now reports from Greenpeace that lobbyists funded by the U.S. oil industry are trying to derail efforts to tackle greenhouse pollution and climate change.

 

The plan is to persuade European business, politicians and the media that the E.U. should abandon the Kyoto protocol and challenge the course of the E.U.'s post-2012 agenda.

 

I think the only thing the people of the world can agree on is that we are going to be awfully lucky to survive

our human activities combined with the natural cycles of nature which appear to be against us as well.