The Kyoto Protocol has no real scientific basis. It is a geo-economic game between the US and EU. The time has come for Russia to pick a side.

September 29 to October 3, Moscow hosted the World Conference on Climate Change (WCCC), the regular gathering of those trying to protect the environment from the assumed ill effects of homo sapiens.
During the course of the conference, a fruitful exchange of ideas occurred between officials from various international agencies and commissions scrupulously following the statistics bearing witness to worldwide warming, academic experts who have put together detailed plans to prevent the worsening of conditions for human survival, and representatives of global business rushing after the smell of big “green” money.
The main connection between the interests of the overwhelming majority of participants at the Moscow conference was the so-called Kyoto Protocol. For almost six years since it was signed, this document has gained a rich history and turned into one of the sacred cows of the contemporary geopolitical order.

Let’s start with what would seem the most obvious, the scientific basis that makes implementing the Kyoto Protocol an absolute necessity. After long debates, the opinion that the planet’s average surface temperature has risen slightly over the last hundred years has come to dominate in the world climatology community (experts have agreed to a figure of 0.6 degrees). Those who insist that the climate on Earth is changing for the worse generally avoid discussing our obviously incomplete knowledge of “temperature history.” If we are working with data from only the last 150-200 years, forget the 20,000 that have passed since the end of the last ice age, it still does not seem correct from a scientific point of view to compare thermometers of Napoleon’s time with today’s super accurate devices. Another well-known gap in current data is connected to a just as obvious lack of information about different locations on the Earth’s surface. Cleverly extrapolating from the recognized global warming trend, the scientists developing climactic models have concluded that by 2100 the Earth’s temperatures should rise by 1.4-5.8 degrees. The huge range of these estimates can’t help but raise questions. Of no less interest are conclusions regarding the relatively probable rise in average sea levels (9-88 cm) and the future concentration of greenhouse gases and aerosols in the Earth’s atmosphere.
At a press conference held by those opposing Russia’s ratification of the Kyoto Protocol, one of the leading Russian specialists, academician Kirill Kondratyev, noted that “the mathematical modeling of climate changes has gained excessive significance today. We actually still understand too little about climactic processes and are hardly justified in making such serious predictions for the next hundred years.”
According to Kondratyev, whose opinion is also shared by Richard Lindzen, a professor of Meteorology at MIT, the Kyoto Protocol is based on the intentionally falsified premise that we can determine the one basic factor influencing the world’s climate (greenhouse gas emissions), while it is highly probable that soon scientists will conclude that greenhouse gases play only a minor role in global climate processes.
Another important Russian scientist and Director of the Institute of Global Climate and Ecology Yuri Izrael believes that even if the absolute majority of big polluter countries sign the Kyoto Protocol and follow it strictly, the quantitative effect will be minor. According to Izrael’s estimates, in 20 years if the “entire world community does nothing” the concentration of CO2 will grow by 20 ppm. If the Protocol should be ratified, it will grow by 18 ppm. Izrael also stresses that science has yet to find clear answers to the issue of what level of carbon dioxide is truly hazardous to humans (400, 500, 1000 ppm, or perhaps even higher).
Martin Agerup, President of the Danish Academy of Future Studies, announced that for all of the joint spending stipulated in the Kyoto Protocol, which runs in the trillions of dollars, the overall “temperature effect” at the end of the 21^st century will be -0.1 degrees at most. According to many scientists, in order for “things to heat up even a little more slowly,” greenhouse gases need to be reduced to at least 60% of today’s levels. This seems impossible even to the most convinced optimists.
According to the Protocol, the developed industrial countries are supposed to reduce emissions by only 5%. Despite this seemingly modest goal, few countries will succeed. Even the EU, the best prepared for ecological modernization, increased CO2 emissions by 1% in 2001 alone. In the US, home of most of the world’s industry, emissions today exceed established levels by 16%. This figure will rise and by the “control” year of 2012, will already reach 33%. Similar processes are underway in many developing countries, which according to the Protocol are not obligated to reduce emissions at all while they remain impoverished. Finally, the negative consequences of the assumed global warming for individual countries and regions remain unclear. Some believe that the temperature increase in the coming decades could mean substantial improvements to lives of a billion people living in developing countries.

If the ecological aspect of the Kyoto Accords seems suspect to many neutral observers and specialists, where did the worldwide hysteria surrounding the Protocol come from?
From the economic point of view, the answer to this naïve question is absolutely banal. In the Protocol’s arcane construction, there are unusually attractive ways to make money out of thin air. Sergei Roginko, Director of the Ecology and Development Group at the Russian Academy of Science’s Institute of European Studies and a member of the Interagency Commission for Climate Change Issues, the new carbon dioxide market based on the Protocol fits perfectly into the current quasi-virtual world economy thanks to the ethereal quality of its product. “The new market offers not the gasses themselves, but the right to emit them. People are trading legal documents based on gasses that have not been and never will be emitted into the atmosphere.”
The EU is playing the central role in this new virtual market. The EU understood at the right time that a major world market with a turnover of hundreds of billions of dollars had emerged from nothing. It is acting enviably in advance of all official timetables set by the Kyoto Accords. As early as 1998, the EU announced that it would establish its regime of internal quota trading by 2005, meaning three years before the beginning of international trading according to the Protocol. Without waiting for the agreement’s legitimization, the bureaucrats in Brussels with surprising self-confidence have sketched out the complex outlines of the future CO2 market. They are pushing not only to become the big players in world quota trading, but also to make up the rules of the game for the rest of the world.
Under pressure from greens in the legislatures of practically all European countries, bills were introduced to levy huge taxes on industrial polluters, which is why an entire range of new ecologically clean technologies were first developed and implemented in the EU. Europe is trying to make its manufacturing competitive compared to the US, and in order to do this, it has to lower costs. The second most important factor contributing to costs after electricity is costs related to “clean manufacturing.”
The most advantageous solution for Europe is to expand its environmental regulations to the rest of the world, first and foremost, to the US. Preliminary estimates published in the Economist show that full compliance with the Kyoto Protocol would cost 1% of the world GDP. The lion’s share of this cost would be borne by the American economy. The White House passionately supported the Kyoto Protocol, but soon after George W. Bush came into office and his administration “got a better handle on the situation,” he refused to ratify it in May 2001. After the US’s departure, the only possibility Europe had to raise the 55-percent barrier was to involve Russia with its conditional 17.4%. Thus, in the prolonged conflict of interest between the world’s two power centers, the US and EU, Russia has unexpectedly come to the fore.

Russia will have to choose its role, either as a secondary player in dividing the CO2 pie or as the next ecological objector (after the US and Australia).
In September 2002, at the UN World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg, Russian prime minister Mikhail Kasyanov gave the Euro-ecologists a pleasant surprise by announcing that Moscow was ready to ratify the Kyoto Protocol “in the very near future.” The long pause which followed clearly demonstrated, however, that Russia is still not ready to move for words to action. According to Russian president Vladimir Putin, “the issue of Russia’s ratification of the Kyoto Protocol will be decided in accordance with its national interests.”
This sudden step back was not well received in Europe. The easily impressionable Europeans were spooked, which led presidential advisor Andrei Illarionov to make the following comment: “Russia’s economic growth means that by the end of the decade, Russia’s harmful emissions will have returned to their 1990 levels. The country will have no extra emissions reserves to sell and thereby gain some financial advantage from ratifying the agreement. After 2012, Russia will have to cover major costs to further reduce harmful emissions. This is why it is absolutely necessary to calculate all costs and compare them to the potential benefits.”
Is the Russian government bluffing or is it engaged in serious consideration of the practicality of signing the Kyoto Protocol? According to Roginko, politicians need to understand that they have little time left to waffle. He believes that if Russia wants to ratify the Protocol, they need to do it by summer 2004. Otherwise there is a very high chance that any advantages Russia could gain from signing will begin to evaporate. “If we really want to ratify, we need to find some compromise between our national interests and those of the EU immediately. This could mean targeted investment channels, massive technological assistance in projects to reduce greenhouse emissions and to improve production efficiency, and finally to finance a national monitoring system, which we will have to set up anyway. It will not be cheap,” says Roginko.

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