The Kyoto Protocol is important because...

• We need some kind of international agreement. Climate chaos is a global problem needing a global framework and a global solution. We need a negotiated agreement supported by all countries, responding to existing inequalities.

• It’s taken 13 years. The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was created in 1988. The Framework Convention on Climate Change was signed at Rio in 1992. The Kyoto Protocol was agreed in 1997 - but not ratified. Many people say ‘yes it’s shit, but it is a start and we can’t afford to lose another 13 years’.

• It will be renegotiated. There is an argument for getting an agreement now, even if it’s weak, so that there is something already in place to renegotiate before 2010.

...The Kyoto Protocol is pants because...

• The targets are crap. The average reduction on 1990 levels was 5.2% before any loopholes. Australia, Norway and Iceland even negotiated increases. The scientists say the whole world needs to reduce emissions by at least 60% on 1990 levels just to stabilise the atmosphere.

• Carbon Trading. The greatest weakness of the Protocol may be that it proposes an international commodity market in carbon. This will be a vast accounting loophole.

• Joint Implementation allows countries to trade emissions reductions. Russia’s emissions, like its economy, have shrunk 30% since 1990. In theory this shortfall can be traded to replace real reductions elsewhere - it’s an accounting fiddle.

• Clean Development Mechanism allows rich countries to offset domestic emissions by funding projects in the South with some vague climate change aim. A gift to logging, nuclear and hydropower corporations.

• Land use changes and reforestation can be offset against reductions, including changes in use and forest cover which were happening anyway.

• Air transport and shipping are excluded. Emissions from air transport and shipping are not accounted to individual countries, so don’t appear in anyone’s targets - another incentive for international air transport.

• No one has ratified it anyway. The argument that ‘it’s better than nothing’ is looking pretty lame given that Romania is still the only country with a target that has formally ratified it.

And the Bonn agreement’s even worse...

The US accounts for around a quarter of global emissions, and 45% of the total emissions reductions pledged in 1997. When the US withdrew, the Protocol could only be saved by letting recalcitrant countries use their veto power to stretch the loopholes. There is now no requirement to reduce domestic emissions- all targets can be met entirely through CDM carbon credits and forest and land use changes and actual emissions may well be higher than in 1990. Pretty impressive for 13 years work.

George Marshall, Rising Tide, 16B Cherwell St., Oxford OX1 1BG 01865 241 097 www.risingtide.org.uk. E-mail: weathersave@netscapeonline.co.uk