UNILATERAL ECONOMIC DISARMAMENT

Kyoto is dead, long live Kyoto (Matthew Warren, The Australian, November 17th, 2006)

The International Energy Agency in Paris predicts that by 2030 more than half of all new emissions will come from the developing world. A smarter, post-2012 new Kyoto therefore must formulate some way of addressing and curbing these emissions. However, the question of lowering developing country emissions has proved to be the most sensitive subject at the Nairobi conference.

The existing Kyoto framework provides an iron-clad cage that excludes developing countries from any regime that would limit or price their emissions. Instead, all reductions by developing countries are voluntary and conditional on the transfer of resources from developed countries through a growing number of pseudo-development programs such as the clean development mechanism, which permits industrialised countries to generate carbon credits by investing in projects that reduce emissions in developing countries.

Developing countries argue, with some moral justification, that the present emissions are the result, which makes them the developed world's problem.

Unsurprisingly, the Group of 77 developing countries has been furiously protecting this cage, blocking or isolating anything at the Nairobi negotiations that comes anywhere near capping or limiting their emissions.

A supposedly mandatory review of the terms of the Kyoto Protocol that might have provided one avenue to discuss a broader framework has not proceeded because the G-77 simply said no.

The two-day informal dialogue keenly promoted by the Australian delegation as a non-binding but exploratory global discussion looking for new ideas and solutions to a post-Kyoto framework was isolated by the head of the Chinese delegation, Jiang Weixin. "This dialogue ... is neither a negotiation process nor an attempt to set up emission reduction limitation targets for the developing countries," he told the joint high level session of world environment ministers. That's a diplomatic way of saying don't even think about it.

It seems impossible to find anyone who has confidence an international treaty would have much effect on future climate, but this is a pseudo-scientific tranzi cult on the rise and speaking the truth may cost conservatives power in some countries.