Time to Ditch Kyoto. Commentary by Gwyn Prins and Steve Rayner,. Nature, October 25, 2007.

“Climate policy after 2012, when the Kyoto treaty expires, needs a radical rethink. More of the same won’t do… The Kyoto Protocol is a symbolically important expression of governments’ concern about climate change. But as an instrument for achieving emissions reductions, it has failed. It has produced no demonstrable reductions in emissions or even in anticipated emissions growth. And it pays no more than token attention to the needs of societies to adapt to existing climate change.

The impending UN Climate Change Conference being held in Bali in December — to decide international policy after 2012 — needs to radically rethink climate policy.

Kyoto’s supporters often blame non-signatory governments, especially the United States and Australia, for its woes. But - the Kyoto Protocol was always the wrong tool for the nature of the job. Kyoto was constructed by quickly borrowing from past treaty regimes dealing with stratospheric ozone depletion, acid rain from sulphur emissions and nuclear weapons. Drawing on these plausible but partial analogies, Kyoto’s architects assumed that climate change would be best attacked directly through global emissions controls, treating tonnes of carbon dioxide like stockpiles of nuclear weapons to be reduced via mutually verifiable targets and timetables. Unfortunately, this borrowing simply failed to accommodate the complexity of the climate-change issue.”

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The chicken seem to come home to roost - we, at www.SustainabiliTank.info, thought also so at Kyoto in 1997, but then Kyoto became the only game in town - so we had to support it. 

 An obstinate US Senate made shambles even of this mini-program with only symbolic value; the Clinton-Gore Administration was not able to change Washington’s attitude, and the Cheney-Bush Administration just ran all over it.

The next Administration, whoever will be President, will be pushed into activism by the business folks that see a way to make money in a less oil-dependent economy. The day will be theirs, so let us indeed find better ways then a plainly retooled Kyoto. 2009 will happen in Copenhagen - so let us start working with the Danes in order to have something for 2009 even though Bali in 2007 will still be a leaderless event. 

In the US Senate now, in October 2007 - Sens. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) and John Warner (R-Va.) are lead cosponsors of America’s Climate Security Act 2007, a bill tentatively scheduled for a Thursday markup. Their bill, S. 2191, picked up momentum last week when Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) declared his support. Sponsors now need one more vote to get the bill out of their seven-member Senate Environment and Public Works subcommittee on global warming.  Sens. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.) and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) are not satisfied with the bill, arguing it should make even tougher emission reduction targets for 2020 and 2050 that better line up with scientific recommendations. Sanders also wants 100 percent of the cap-and-trade program’s allowances distributed via an auction in 2025, rather than 2036 as the legislation currently requires. Will one of them cave in and help get the Lieberman-Warner bill out of subcommittee? Does it make sense to have a weak bill, or it is better to wait for the proponents to make it stronger in order to get that fourth vote? Will Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), the chairwoman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, who is also an advocate of tighter emission limits, decide for the expediency of compromise and tell the Democrats on the subcommittee to bend, so she does not face the political reality that non-compromise may keep the bill stuck in subcommittee. Is today’s US Senate finally going to face the reality of climate change?