Kyoto is Collapsing

The Telegraph notes that the British House of Lords issued a report on climate change in which

They conclude: "The Kyoto protocol makes little difference to rates of warming, and has a naive compliance mechanism which can only deter other countries from signing up to subsequent tighter emissions targets. We urge the Government to take a lead in exploring alternative 'architectures' for future protocols, based perhaps on agreements on technology and its diffusion."

This, of course, accords strongly with the new Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate, authored by the US and endorsed by Australia, China, India, South Korea and Japan that stands, despite official protestations, as an alternative to Kyoto.

The article also notes at the recent G-8 conference at Gleneagles

the participants were faced with the choice of either casting America as a polluting pariah or signalling that the Kyoto accord was a blind alley, as President Bush had always maintained. To the surprise of many, they chose the latter.

And also that,

the European Union countries...have no realistic chance of meeting the targets they have agreed for 2012. Having set themselves unrealistic limits on carbon dioxide emissions, with draconian penalties if they are missed, the outcome promises to be a re-run of the Stability and Growth Pact farce. Breaches of that pact, which was designed to control government deficits for countries in the European single currency, are now so widespread that it's essentially a dead letter.

Since signing up to Kyoto, the EU members have actually drifted further away from their targets. Twelve of the 15 original signatories are so far away that they are virtually certain to miss them, and to incur the eye-watering financial penalties as a result. Only Britain and Germany are closer, thanks to the switch from coal to gas here and the closure of East Germany's heavy industry there. The politicians may claim that we are "on track" to meet our targets, but as a whole the EU is already miles off.

The article concludes with the

awful possibility that the Americans were right all along. The Kyoto accord looks like yesterday's approach to yesterday's conception of tomorrow's problem.

Read it here.

Actually it doesn't seem all that awful. Scrapping the manifestly unworkable Kyoto framework for something more reasonable and rational looks a lot like progress.