Reference: No deal in Copenhagen, Bangkok Post, November 17, 2009

Although the Europeans are taking the high road and pointing fingers at the USA and China for spoiling their party in Copenhagen (No deal in Copenhagen, Bangkok Post, November 17, 2009), the apparent European united front is not feasible as it stands because the poorer Eastern European members are not able to bear the share of the funding burden they have been apportioned. Also, much of the EU's commitment to "reduce" emissions by 30% " is not real because it is based on accounting reductions achieved by purchasing offsets from developing countries and not by reducing emissions in Europe. As a historical note, neither the Kyoto Protocol nor the Bali road map, nor the UNFCCC contains any reference to an "expiration date" for the commitment by "Annex 1 countries" (developed countries) to reduce emissions. In fact the Bali road map says that the Annex 1 countries will make even deeper cuts in the future after the 2012 targets have been met. In that respect, the new idea that Kyoto is going to expire in 2012 and that a new Copenhagen Protocol is needed as a successor to Kyoto appears to be a ruse by the Annex 1 countries to kill Kyoto possibly because they are suffering from buyer's remorse having bought into the Kyoto Protocol in which they gave away the ranch to the developing countries. The way things are going, however, with Copenhagen in disarray, Kyoto will continue to be the only guideline for emission reduction targets for the foreseeable future. It's a bitter pill for the Annex 1 countries to swallow. In any case, both Copenhagen and Kyoto now face the greater doom of irrelevance if the hundreds of damning documents leaked from the Hadley Climate Research Unit are verified as genuine, for they appear to reveal that the scientific consensus of global warming may be more propaganda than science.

Cha-am Jamal
Thailand