The next Kyoto?

As 1,000 delegates gathered in Bangkok this week to discuss a successor to the Kyoto Protocol, news broke of an increase in European Union greenhouse-gas emissions last year. It was not unexpected. Weak-willed governments, argue some European carbon-cutters, are the cause of the 1.1 percent EU emissions rise despite a 3-year-old “cap-and-trade” carbon system. This is nominally true: Carbon permits were over-issued, and this drove down the price, making it easier to continue emitting. But it is beside the point.

Judge the realism and sincerity of this week’s Bangkok discussants by their willingness to grapple with the coal-burning, carbon-emitting juggernaut known as the People’s Republic of China, as well as India. Neither show much intention to heed the carbon scourges. Even on the discussants’ own terms, this is a serious problem.

As the world’s largest economy, the United States remains the world’s leading carbon emitter, and both the American and European economies are far bigger emitters than either China or India on a per-capita basis. But China’s burgeoning economy is on a pace to offset just about all European or American reduction scenarios except the most optimistic ones.

The U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change had previously projected a 2 percent to 5 percent average annual increase for China. But a study last month from the University of California at Berkeley and U.C. San Diego showed that the rate since 2004 is actually around 11 percent. In other words, it is well poised to overtake the United States as world leader in the next decade or two. China is on a pace to increase carbon emissions by 600 million tons over the decade 2000-2010, which would wipe out the gains even if the EU’s very optimistic target were met — to reduce this year’s emissions of 310 million by one quarter to 236 million by 2012.

Then there is India, whose top officials can still be heard insisting that emission reductions are the responsibility of wealthy Western countries. Consider the Euro contortions over that one.

All this shows that even on their own terms, the carbon-cutters are tilting at windmills. Western countries can continue distorting their economies for illusory gains, or they can invest in real energy solutions. Nuclear power, whose value many European nations already depend upon, should be on the lips of every green carbon-cutter.