If the rest of the world wants to commit economic suicide they are welcome to it. What you will see is that the countries who refuse to go along with Kyoto, like the U.S., China and India, will still have thriving economies while the Kyoto countries make their headlong rush for the 19th century.
Of course that won't happen. Countries will start pealing off of Kyoto one by one as the economic realities pile up one by one.
Kyoto signatory Canada looks like it will be the first to back away officially: Canada Joins Anti-Kyoto Bloc
This week's announcement by the Canadian government -- that it may join a U.S.-led coalition focused on voluntary emissions cuts -- could be part of a global shift away from Kyoto's binding targets.
In a somewhat surprising development, Canada, a long-time supporter of the Kyoto Protocol, announced that it may want to join the Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate (AP6), a six-nation coalition focusing on voluntary emission-reduction steps and technology transfers. Many environmentalists oppose AP6 out of a fear that it may undermine political support for the legally binding Kyoto treaty.
The partnership, launched in mid-2005, is an agreement among six countries -- Australia, China, India, Japan, South Korea and the United States -- to develop and share greenhouse-gasreduction technology to combat climate change. According to the AP6 Web site, the six partner countries "represent about half of the world's economy, population and energy use, and they produce about 65% of the world's coal, 48% of the world's steel, 37% of world's aluminum, and 61% of the world's cement." The countries also account for half the world's greenhouse-gas emissions.
Unlike the Kyoto Protocol, the Asia-Pacific Partnership is voluntary and technology-based, and lets each country set its own goals for greenhouse gas emission reductions, rather than legally binding them to a greenhouse gas reduction target. The group sees itself as "a voluntary, non-legally binding framework for international co-operation to facilitate the development, diffusion, deployment, and transfer of existing, emerging and longer term cost-effective, cleaner, more efficient technologies and practices."
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It is too early to see the real significance of Canada's request to join the AP6. For the Harper government, it is simply a logical next step in the "Made In Canada" approach to climate policy. Between membership in the AP6 and their new Clean Air Act initiatives, Canada can still trumpet its strong commitment to greenhouse-gas-emission reductions, while taking a step away from the hard-target focus of Kyoto.
The key question that remains is whether Canada is a bellwether for other countries, as some Canadians like to see themselves, and is likely to lead more of the anti-Kyoto flock into the AP6 pasture. After all, if Canada, which prides itself on internationalism, "soft power," and a somewhat anti-American policy stance, can join a U.S.-sponsored rival to the Kyoto Protocol, who can't?
I find the explicit linking of Kyoto with anti-American sentiment telling. Don't you?
I'm not sure we will see countries "flocking" to the AP6 as such, but it seems likely that more and more countries will back away from the strictures of Kyoto as the economic realities become impossible to ignore. European countries have been able to ignore such realities by playing carbon "trading" games that do nothing but mask the fact they haven't met Kyoto standards and do not seem likely to do so in the foreseeable future. So, even if Canada proves to be one of the few to publicly remove itself from Kyoto, you will see may other countries leave it as a practical matter, though it may remain the "law" of the land.
Over at CQ they had a slightly different take:
Kyoto would force the West to commit economic suicide while allowing India and China to pollute to their hearts' content in reaping the rewards. Bush's AP6 engages all sides equally and uses technology sharing as an incentive for compliance. The Chinese need access to Western technology so badly that they jump through hoops to steal it. India doesn't need it as badly, but they want to create a cleaner energy system for themselves, and have expanded their nuclear program to accommodate that need.
If Canada joins the AP6, Kyoto will collapse. It will bind only those nations who already have economic difficulties, and Kyoto compliance -- which none of them have met -- will cost them even more. In the end, AP6 will bind all nations together in a manner that Kyoto explicitly rejected and will allow everyone to proceed with clean-environment initiatives on an equal footing.
This view imparts a vision of the AP6 as a framework to get actual things done which is inaccurate. For the largest part the AP6 is a publicity stunt that gives politically expedient "cover" for its members. It may facilitate on some technological issues, but pollution control policies will remain entirely in the domestic arena. Because of that, economic realities will win the day.
Kyoto is like the dodo. All it ever took was an honest look to see that it was never going to fly. And one day it will go away, never to be seen again. The only difference between the two is that after the dodo was gone the world was a poorer place.
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