Kyoto’s failures haunt new U.N. talks

In the Kyoto Protocol’s accounting of greenhouse gases, the former Eastern bloc is a smashing success.

Russia: Down 29% in carbon dioxide emissions since 1990.

Romania: A 43% reduction.

Latvia: A resounding 60% drop.

Reductions such as those across Eastern Europe were the main reason the United Nations was recently able to report a 12% drop in emissions from the accord’s industrialized countries over the 1990-2005 period.

It was an illusion.

The progress wasn’t due to a global embrace of green power, but rather to the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, which shut down smoke-belching factories across the region.

“Their emissions dropped before Kyoto even existed,” said Michael Gillenwater, a climate policy researcher at Princeton University.

Despite the 1997 Kyoto Protocol’s status as the flagship of the fight against climate change, it has been a failure in the hard, expensive work of actually reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

Its restrictions have been so gerrymandered that only 36 countries are required to limit their pollution. Just over a third of those -- members of the former Eastern bloc -- can pollute at will because their limits were set so far above their actual emissions.

China and India, whose fast-rising emissions easily cancel out any cuts elsewhere, are allowed to keep polluting.

And the biggest polluter of all, the United States, has simply refused to join the treaty.

That leaves Western Europe, Canada, Japan and New Zealand to do the work of the world. Their emissions are rising despite their commitment, starting next year, to reduce them by an average of roughly 8% from 1990 levels.

No more leeway

Fixing the flaws of Kyoto has become an urgent crusade as United Nations talks begin today in Bali, Indonesia, to create the successor to the treaty, which expires at the end of 2012. Negotiations are expected to last at least two years.

This time, scientists say there is no leeway for weak measures. The push has come from a series of landmark reports this year by the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that concluded that greenhouse gas emissions must begin declining in the next decade to prevent a dangerous temperature rise.

The panel, which shared this year’s Nobel Peace Prize with former Vice President Al Gore, laid out a framework for reducing emissions that could cost trillions of dollars over the next two decades.

The question is whether the nations meeting in Bali are willing to embrace such stringent measures.

“Countries are going to have to get serious,” said Mark Bernstein, a USC energy and environmental policy expert.

For all its flaws, Kyoto was a remarkable agreement, forged at a time when there were still widespread doubts about the seriousness -- or even existence -- of global warming.

For the public, climate change was largely an exotic vision of environmental collapse that sounded at times like science fiction. But scientists, who understood the physics of rising temperatures, were already worried.

Delegates meeting in Kyoto, Japan, outlined an agreement that would last 15 years. It would establish a baseline for emissions somewhere in the past and require countries to meet reduction targets.

Because the industrialized world was responsible for the massive accumulation of greenhouse gases over the last 150 years, it would take the lead and bear the bulk of the costs.

A key element was to get the world to sign on together as a statement of resolve.

It immediately became apparent that regulating emissions from fossil fuels -- the lifeblood of the world economy -- would not be easy.

Developing countries, led by China and India, refused to agree to mandatory caps, arguing that their economies should not be punished for the pollution sins of the industrialized nations.

The Kyoto signatories agreed to exempt developing countries from pollution limits. That has amounted to 139 nations.

Today, the top nine major countries with the fastest-growing emissions are in the developing world.

Together, 10 developing countries increased their annual emissions by more than 5 billion metric tons, accounting for 75% of the growth in global carbon dioxide emissions between 1990 and 2005, according to an analysis of data from the U.S. Department of Energy.

China’s emissions grew 138% over that period, catching up to U.S. levels and setting a pace to double them in less than a decade. “They’re going to have people gagging in the street,” said John Weyant, an energy expert at Stanford University.

Letting the developing world avoid emissions caps put the burden on 38 industrial nations -- the United States, most of Europe, Canada, Japan, Australia and New Zealand.

One problem was picking a year to establish the emissions baseline.

A late date would have been least painful for countries with healthy economies. But that would have put the Eastern European countries at an enormous disadvantage because their economies had crashed and thus their baseline would have been too low.

The baseline was ultimately set at 1990 for most countries -- a time when the Eastern European economies were still intact.

As a result, 13 countries of the former Soviet bloc were essentially left free of a cap. Not including their illusory reductions, total carbon dioxide emissions from countries bound by Kyoto’s caps have risen by more than 8%.

There have been a few bright spots: a 4% emissions cut in Denmark and a 7% drop in Sweden.

But there are many more failures.

Rising carbon levels

Japan: Emissions up 13% since 1990.

Canada: A 27% rise.

Spain: A 61% increase.

Outside the former Soviet bloc, only six of the 23 industrialized Kyoto countries have cut their carbon dioxide emissions since 1990 -- leaving few nations positioned to meet next year’s reduction targets.

But even if all of the industrial countries could make their targets, the goals negotiated a decade ago now look tepid compared with the 50% cuts that U.N. scientists believe are necessary over the next 40 years.

“There was not a lot of science behind the targets,” said Nathan Hultman, a professor of science, technology and international affairs at Georgetown University. “It was kind of pulling a number out of a hat and saying, ‘What do we think we can achieve in 10 to 15 years?’ ”

Michael Wara, a Stanford researcher who studies the economics of greenhouse-gas emissions, was more blunt: “The Kyoto Protocol really just scratches at the surface of the cuts we need.”

All of these problems pale in comparison to the biggest of all: The world’s most prolific polluter, the United States, has refused to ratify Kyoto. Australia also refused, although it has recently signaled that it intends to ratify next year.

The Clinton administration signed the treaty but never sought ratification in the Senate, which had unanimously passed a resolution opposing any agreement that would seriously harm the U.S. economy or would not set reduction timetables and targets for developing countries.

Today, the United States is responsible for about a fifth of the world’s annual carbon dioxide emissions. Its emissions jumped 20% between 1990 and 2005, according to U.N. figures.

Annie Petsonk, international counsel for the Environmental Defense Fund in Washington, said that for all the problems of Kyoto, the accord still should not be judged too harshly.

“It’s an important, imperfect first step,” she said.

But Steve Rayner, an environmental policy expert at Oxford University, said that the time for such a lenient assessment is past. Kyoto “was a diplomatic success, but environmentally it was a complete failure.”

The negotiations for the next phase of the accord have the advantage of taking place when public and scientific opinions have swung behind taking aggressive steps to stabilize global warming.

To be effective, Kyoto II will have to directly address the failures of the past. It will have to include the United States and force developing nations to rein in their polluting, experts said.

“It’s going to be very difficult getting a new treaty,” Petsonk said. “But we cannot sit around letting carbon levels rise.”

alan.zarembo@latimes.com