The rest of the world is looking forward to the US returning to the international fold, in particular to its reengagement, post-George W Bush, in treaties like the Kyoto protocol. Both Barack Obama and John McCain are committed, but I see trouble ahead.

This could be a marriage in which the US and the rest of the world have very different nuptial expectations, regardless of who makes it to the White House.

Talks began in Bali last December on the next phase of the Kyoto protocol, to come into force in 2013. And the world is desperate to have the US back. Negotiators on the holiday island would done anything for just a kiss from the Bush team. They got a kiss-off instead.

The talks have a deadline for final agreement in Copenhagen in December 2009. So come next year, Washington looks like being able to name its own terms for reentry.

Most obviously, they won't expect to be held to the emissions reductions agreed in Kyoto 11 years ago by the Clinton/Gore administration. Those targets required a 6% cut in US emissions by now, instead of the 15% increase seen so far.

Whether it is the emissaries of McCain or Obama who head for Denmark, they will expect a free ride back into the process, with today's elevated emissions the new base point for any future cuts.

That will make quite a few countries upset. The Australians, who rejoined Kyoto last year after departing with Bush, will expect the same. So may the Canadians, who stuck by the treaty in name but have so far taken no steps to reduce their emissions. In fact, despite promising an Uncle-Sam-size 6% cut, they have out-emitted their neighbours.

The Kyoto rules require any country that doesn't meet its target to buy spare permits from under-emitters like the Russians and Ukrainians. But so far Canada has taken no steps to do that. And if they use the US as a precedent, then why not the Japanese, or the Italians or the Spaniards, or anyone else still nowhere near their targets.

At that point, the entire edifice of carbon trading - the one success of Kyoto so far - could come tumbling down.

Even if all the above can be patched together, then another hurdle awaits. If McCain wins, he says he won't agree to any US emissions targets unless China and other major developing countries agree to targets too.

He has not said what kind of targets, but as China made clear after the recent G8 summit in Japan, they will have nothing to do with such a proposal. Which is hardly surprising, when Chinese emissions are, per head of population, only a quarter those of the US and a third those of Europe.

Obama's team agree they will have to make the first pledge. But even they say that, if there is no quid pro quo, than they will ultimately impose tariffs on carbon-intensive products. It is going to get nasty.

We may begin to see how things will pan out pretty soon. The next big climate pow-pow is in Poznan in December. By then there will be a President-elect in the US. He will have his entourage in Poland. They won't officially be negotiating, but every word they utter will be pored over.

Some thought that, when Bush pressed the ejector button and took the US out of Kyoto in 2001, he would doom the treaty. He didn't. But ironically, the return of the US could have precisely that effect.

Fred Pearce, senior environment correspondent

Labels: climate change, freds-footprint, kyoto protocol, US

We are used to hearing the likes of US president George W Bush and Aussie prime minister John Howard clamouring for the world to ditch the Kyoto protocol. Their reasons, whether you agree with them or not, are political and economic. But it comes as a bit of a surprise when the scientific journal Nature publishes a commentary saying the same.

In this week's issue, two UK-based social scientists – Gwyn Prins of the London School of Economics and Steve Rayner of Oxford University – have published a commentary saying it's time for the Kyoto protocol process to take a curtain call.

Rayner wrote to me in an email:

"We see no evidence of Kyoto actually leading to reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, much less of stimulating the fundamental technological change that will be required to achieve the 60-80% reductions in greenhouse gas emissions that scientists tell us the world will need to achieve in order to prevent what the Framework Convention calls 'dangerous interference with the atmosphere'."

Rayner and Prins think the Kyoto protocol is too simple for too complex a problem. To quote the Nature piece itself:

"Climate change is not amenable to an elegant solution [limiting greenhouse gas emissions] because it is not a discrete problem. It is better understood as a symptom of a particular development path and its globally interlaced supply-system of fossil energy. Together they form a complex nexus of mutually reinforcing, intertwined patterns of human behaviour, physical materials and the resulting technology. It is impossible to change such complex systems in desired ways by focusing on just one thing." (Nature, vol 449, p 973)

They go on to say that while there may be no "silver bullet" solution to climate change (such as setting greenhouse gas emissions targets) there may be a "silver buckshot" portfolio of solutions. And they outline five elements which they believe are key to forming such a portfolio.

They are:

• Focusing negotiations of emissions caps on the big emitters rather than trying to achieve consensus among all national governments.
  
• Allowing financial markets to figure out on their own how they want to trade carbon emissions rather than imposing a global emissions trading market.
• Putting public investment in research and development into energy on a wartime footing.
• Increasing the amount of money that is spent on helping people adapt to the inevitable effects of climate change.
  
• Working on climate change at all different levels, from nations and international conventions down to regions and cities.

I think it's great that some people are thinking about how to improve the political process that is attempting to deal with climate change. There is no doubt this process needs all the help it can get: a recent study suggested that emissions need to fall more dramatically than currently envisaged for so-called "dangerous" climate change to be avoided.

And their description of climate change as a "symptom of a particular development path and its globally interlaced supply-system of fossil energy" is inspired and accurate. I once met a climate scientist who was running a research programme in West Africa, who told me the beauty of developing nations – and of countries in Africa in particular – is that they have a golden opportunity to look at the Western model, learn from its mistakes, and choose a better, more sustainable development path.

But I confess that I'm not entirely comfortable with a call to scrap the UN process entirely.
And if you look at the five points, what Prins and Rayner are suggesting does, in fact, have quite a bit in common with ongoing UN negotiations. Two of their points – energy R&D and adaptation – are actively discussed in all climate policy forums, and are on the agenda for the UN annual climate summit in Bali in December.

Where they do radically depart from the UN process is in their call to limit negotiations of emissions caps to the big emitters. The pair argue that striving for consensus among nearly 200 governments is unrealistic and counterproductive. I agree. The fact that the US government in September held talks among the world's top polluters is an encouraging sign that those whose emissions matter most are putting their heads together.

But what is not helpful is when these sorts of talks are not fed into the UN process. Then there comes a risk that one will detract from the other. Bush's climate change meeting in September took place four days after a UN meeting on the same subject, and unlike many of his peers Bush was absent from the UN meeting. Why not attend both meetings?

Bush's government also launched the Asia-Pacific climate agreement in 2005, which brings together the US, China, Australia, and others, in a pact to develop and exchange clean energy technologies. But, so far, this agreement doesn't seem to have yielded anything. Until such initiatives can demonstrate that they are concretely addressing the problem of rising global emissions, they will continue to appear as mere diversion tactics.

So, to come back to Prins and Rayner's commentary: yes, the process needs to be diversified. But it should not be frayed by a multitude of high-profile, low-impact initiatives.

Catherine Brahic, online environment repoter

Labels: climate change, kyoto protocol

What is the secret of the Spanish government's carbon dioxide diet? Trees. More than 20 million of them.

Back when Spain ratified the Kyoto Protocol on greenhouse gas emissions in May 2002, it was in a good position, carbon-wise. The fact that its economy was lagging behind the rest of the European Union meant that while some countries were facing serious emissions cuts, Spain could increase its emissions by 15% above 1990 levels under the protocol.

Trouble is, Spanish emissions are now 48% above 1990 levels and the government thinks that by the time the 2008-2012 accounting period for the Kyoto Protocol comes to an end, it will only have managed to bring that down to 37%.

It intends to handle most of the situation by investing in clean energy projects in developing countries through the Kyoto Protocol's Clean Development Mechanism. The rest, it will deal with by planting trees. The local government of the Castilla-la Mancha region has said it will plant 20 million trees in the next 4 years and Madrid says it will create hanging, vertical gardens to cover buildings and plant 1.5 million trees.

As we've written many times before, trees are not an easy way to deal with carbon dioxide emissions. First of all, planting a tree does not guarantee it won't soon be cut down. But also, the location of the tree is key to determining its effect on global warming. Research published in December 2006 showed that planting trees in tropical countries can cool help cool the planet. But in the mid-to-high latitudes, the warming effect of the dark colour of trees tends to outweigh the cooling effect of their carbon dioxide absorption (see Location is key for trees to fight global warming).

And finally, trees will not continue to grow endlessly so long as there is carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. They need other things to grow, like nitrogen. Research published in April 2006 suggested that insufficient amounts of nitrogen will eventually limit plant growth regardless of how much extra carbon dioxide is available.

Catherine Brahic, Online environment reporter

Labels: kyoto protocol, spain, trees