Kyoto

Se cumple el primer aniversario del Tratado de Kyoto, la nueva fórmula mágica que nos abrirá las puertas del cielo en la tierra. Como dice la canción: cada veche más lindo más lindo, cada veche mejore mejore. Vean también el comentario de Víctor en lo de Isidro:

This week marks the first anniversary of the Kyoto Protocol's coming into force. It's an unhappy birthday. The one-year-old has been badly treated by its parents, its hopes for reductions in greenhouse-gas emissions seem unlikely to be fulfilled, and its prospects for survival beyond 2012 look bleak. On top of all that, it was emasculated at its very first meeting in Montreal. Jacques Chirac's "first component of an authentic global governance" has been all but abandoned by the global community.

We must first remember that, while its supporters regularly claim that it has the support of the 161 countries that have ratified it, only 34 of those countries have actually promised to do anything as a result. And of those 34 countries, the former Communist countries of the Eastern bloc have already achieved their targeted emissions reductions only by virtue of the collapse of their old, uneconomic smokestack industries. That means that the only countries that have actually undertaken to take real, active measures to rein in their greenhouse-gas emissions are the EU-15, Canada, Japan, and New Zealand.

For those few countries, the story is an unhappy one. New Zealand thought that it could make money by selling credits based on its carbon-absorbing forests, but that hope has proved illusory. The most recent estimate is that complying with Kyoto will cost New Zealand NZ$1 billion. The former Canadian government found itself completely unable to restrain emissions to the extent that they have grown by considerably more than those of the U.S. New Prime Minister Stephen Harper has essentially sidelined Canada's participation in favor of a "made in Canada" approach to reducing emissions (if it was easier to withdraw from Kyoto, indications are that he probably would). Japan has also continued to increase emissions, and tackling them is the subject of fierce debate between government departments that shows no sign of ending any time soon.