I wanted to get this out there, as I haven’t seen much speculation. I got this from a research director at a Lab in Illinois that had worked as a senior researcher at LANL and is well connected with the entire DOE Labs system.

… “any new national climate change policy should be conditional on an international agreement that requires full international participation.” ” In short, the Institute’s climate change policy looks stunningly like that of the Bush administration: “Don’t just sit there, do nothing.”

WTF is that statement included for, as though it’s a bad thing ?

This is something I hope Obama continues. Bush’s opposition to the Kyoto protocol. In fact, the best thing he could do for the environment would be to derail Kyoto and kill it.

For all the cheap criticism that’s been leveled at the US for opposing Kyoto on whatever grounds, one simple fact remains: Kyoto is a formal agreement to embrace this “doing nothing” stance that’s mentioned.

I live in Australia, a first world nation that has one of the highest per-capita CO2 emission levels in the world. This also means we have the greatest scope for reducing that. If we reduced it to nil, this wouldn’t do shit for anyone since we account for around 2% of the world’s emissions.
Hence, it amounts to little more than window dressing.

An agreement that exempts China and India, the world’s largest emitter and the 2nd most prominent emerging economy, simply amounts to agreeing that CO2 emissions will not be tackled. Whatever tipping point exists for emissions that cannot be reversed, Kyoto embraces that fate rather than avoids it.