-From the Japan Times:

“The data also show that emissions in fiscal 2002 were 7.6 percent higher than in fiscal 1990, the base year under the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which calls for emission cuts as a means of halting global warming. Japan, required to reduce its emissions by 6 percent from the 1990 level between 2008 and 2012 under the protocol, will now have to cut emissions by 13.6 percent of the fiscal 2002 figure. [Environment Minister Yuriko] Koike said Cabinet ministers who attended the meeting expressed concern that Japan faces an uphill battle in achieving its Kyoto Protocol requirements.”

-From the Financial Times:

“The European Commission is to start legal action against six European Union states for not submitting plans to cut carbon dioxide emissions. Margot Wallström, the environment commissioner, yesterday said her preliminary analysis of plans submitted was that many were too generous in allocations to companies. ‘Too many allowances and a resulting low price will create little incentive to change behaviour,’ she said.”

-From The Guardian:

“Leading Russian scientists told President Vladimir Putin yesterday that the Kyoto emissions treaty discriminates against Russia, would damage its economy and would not significantly reduce global warming, increasing the chance that the Kremlin will refuse to ratify the agreement…. Experts from the Russian Academy of Sciences submitted a report to the Kremlin containing their long-awaited assessment of the scientific virtues of the pact for Russia… They said the total benefit to Russia would be a small drop in the concentration of carbon dioxide in the air over the next 10 years, but the total cost of the pact’s emission-reduction measures would be “tens of trillions of dollars over a hundred years”.

-From the aSydney Morning Herald:

“The [Australian] Federal Government has opposed the protocol and recently quashed moves to institute an alternative carbon trading system that would have reduced greenhouse emissions by forcing producers, and consumers, to pay a price for them.”

Lesson: Argue about Kyoto if you must, but it is what comes next that matters more.