* And perhaps most importantly, as the first major climate summit since the first compliance period of Kyoto Protocol kicked off last 1 January, negotiators found themselves working on a post-Kyoto treaty amid striking evidence that the
Kyoto agreement itself has so far been starkly ineffective in its main task of obliging countries to reduce emissions.
For example, 182 parties have signed up to the
Kyoto Agreement, including the UK and all the developed countries with the exception of the USA.
Yet the aviation industry is not only exempt from the
Kyoto agreement on reducing greenhouse gases it also dodges most British taxes on fuels and pollutants as well.
The United States, which is the only industrialized nation that has not signed the
Kyoto agreement, has been painted as the chief global-warming villain by "green" activists and their media and UN supporters, who claim that there is overwhelming scientific consensus that human-caused emissions must be drastically limited to avert an imminent global catastrophe.
The
Kyoto agreement committed developed countries to cut carbon emissions causing global warming by five per cent from 1990 levels.
Japanese diplomats helped produce the original
Kyoto agreement, and they must now learn from the missteps and mistakes that followed that meeting.
It does not seem likely that America's moneyed elite will soon realize their errors, but that has little to do with the concrete measures we can take to curb the serious problem of global warming, such as signing the
Kyoto agreement and lessening carbon emissions.
America refused to join the 1997
Kyoto agreement, which runs out in 2012.
America continues to show no sign of changing its stance and finally ratifying the
Kyoto agreement.
Reduce that and experts say you not only make farming greener and more efficient, but it could help Britain achieve its commitments under the
Kyoto agreement. Cow flatulence is officially big news, officially important.
By providing a monetary incentive for nations to preserve their forests, the strategy would encourage greater developing-country participation in the
Kyoto agreement (which currently only applies to industrial countries), the environmental groups say.
Last week the Commission warned that EU countries were far from achieving the greenhouse gas emissions pledges they made as part of the
Kyoto agreement.
