A Real Fix or Just Hot Air?

Whe

n delegates from 161 nations hammered out an agreement in December 1997 to save the planet from global warming, they picked an appropriate venue: Kyoto, the well-preserved cultural capital of ultra-industrialized Japan, a city where high-rises aren't allowed to ruin vistas of venerable temples in maple groves. The toughly negotiated pact became known as the Kyoto Protocol, although it's actually a treaty: 141 countries have ratified it, legally binding themselves to reduce their emissions of six greenhouse gases by 2012. From the start, there were doubts about the effectiveness of the plan. Developing countries that signed on, such as China and India, were let off the hook so economic progress wouldn't be impeded. Australia and the U.S. signed the protocol in 1997, but ultimately chose not to ratify the treaty, saying their economies would suffer too.

Last week, those two nations surprised the world with an alternative planet-saving scheme at a location seemingly chosen at random. On the sidelines of an Association of Southeast Asian Nations meeting in Vientiane, the capital of Laos, U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick and Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer unveiled the Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate, a six-nation initiative that was pulled together in behind-the-scenes diplomatic talks over the past six months. The other countries taking part—China, India, Japan and South Korea—are responsible for 48% of the world's greenhouse-gas emissions. Diplomatically, they're bedfellows that rarely get together on anything. That's the virtue of the deal, according to Zoellick. "We're going to be more effective in dealing with these combined challenges on energy, the environment, [and] climate change," he said, "if we do so in a way that takes account of mutual interests and incentives." Zoellick emphasized that the partnership isn't a substitute for the Kyoto pact but should be seen as a "complement" to it.

Environmentalists see less complement than insult—and some fear that this rival plan may deliver a fatal blow to the Kyoto Protocol. "The new pact will attempt to lure in other nations from the Asia-Pacific region and expand its influence," says Choi Seung Kook, deputy chief of the Green Korea environmental group, "until it is big enough to ignore the Kyoto treaty." Environmentalists point out that the agreement announced in Vientiane spells out no concrete goals to reduce global warming, sets no emissions targets for countries, and can't even be called a pact—the six countries merely endorsed a vision statement. The next apparent step is for the six nations to meet in November in Adelaide to start work on a "nonbinding compact" that emphasizes consensus, cooperation and advanced technologies as the means to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions.

The Australians have been particularly aggressive in making the case for a Kyoto alternative. In a press conference last week, Prime Minister John Howard called the treaty "a failure." Ian Campbell, Minister for the Environment, hammered away at the fact that the protocol hasn't got universal support, relies too much on restrictions, and inhibits "absolutely vital" economic development. Another theme is that the world needs a plan that extends beyond 2012, when emissions limits set in Kyoto end. Even the 2012 goals are in jeopardy. "I don't think Europe can achieve its goals. I don't think Japan can," says Warwick McKibbin, an economist specializing in energy issues at the Australian National University. "Kyoto is a toothless tiger, a very political agreement."

Environmental groups defend Kyoto and see nothing but backpedaling in the new arrangement—if not something worse, like a protection of coal industries in Australia, the U.S., China and India. Paul Epstein, associate director of the Center for Health and the Global Environment at Harvard Medical School, says he sees a single advantage to the new approach: that the Bush Administration is finally acknowledging that global warming is real and that fossil fuels play a role. "But this dual pact approach is not helpful," he says. "The entire world community needs to come together on this issue. The pattern of climate instability we're seeing now is what we predicted for the end of this decade. Look at what's happening in Bombay." According to environmentalists, the torrential rain in the city of 16 million is an augur that the world must get its act—or acts—together or face the perils of an increasingly unstable environment.