The Kyoto Protocol – is it an absolute must in the global climate battle – or an idea whose time has long passed? Or is it something more – a destructive cul-de-sac that has kept the world from really tackling climate change?
During the latest UN Framework Convention on Climate Change meeting in Bonn over the last two weeks, delegates once again took up extending Kyoto Protocol commitments beyond their current expiration date in 2012. Extending the protocol was one of two major negotiating “tracks” set up two and a half years ago in Bali – and neither one has been settled yet.
For Kyoto, the arguments haven’t changed much either.
Protocol advocates say it’s the only legally binding treaty in force that begins to restore equity worldwide. It requires the advanced – or Annex I – countries, the ones who industrialized first and emitted much of the carbon now causing atmospheric warming, to cut their carbon emissions first. Meanwhile, non-Annex I countries, the developing economies, get their turn at fossil-intensive development. The developed...
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