OPINION/COMMENTARY

Kyoto Protocol Simply Wrong, Wrong, Wrong

The Kyoto Protocol on climate change, which comes into force this week, represents a massive act of folly by many of the world's industrialized nations. It sets the world on a course to economic disaster while doing nothing to alleviate global warming. It is the wrong solution to the wrong problem at the wrong time. Kyoto attempts to alleviate what may be a major cause of warming—the emission of greenhouse gases—by suppressing energy use in the developed world. Yet energy use is vital to modern health and wealth. The Kyoto treaty itself recognizes this fact by exempting developing countries, eager to achieve prosperity, from greenhouse gas reductions. As a result, China and India are likely to become the major emitters of greenhouse gases on the planet within a few decades. This means that, even with Kyoto, global emissions of greenhouse gases will continue to increase. So the Kyoto Protocol will do virtually nothing to halt any possible global temperature increase— the temperature that would have been reached in 2100 will be reached in 2106. Yet independent analyses of the annual cost to the world of complying with Kyoto put it at between $150 billion and $350 billion a year (the global development aid budget is $50 billion annually). The cost of the "solution" vastly outweighs any purported benefits....