If Kyoto Is Trashed Will Cancun Survive ?

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The  Cancun climate change conference at Mexico that started last week was a  no hoper right from the beginning. After the fiasco of the high profile Copenhagen summit where 120 heads of state and an equal number of activist group attended but could agree to nothing, Cancun has drawn a blank as per a Reuters News report. The report posted by the US based Green Biz.com shows that even Reuters the world's oldest and largest news agency did not send its own staff to cover the conference but has outsourced  the news content from third party sources. Still the conference has had  its fair share of fireworks and controversies in the first few days.



The first shock came from Japan when it refused to sign and ratify the second installment of the Kyoto pact that will ensure compliance of  emission curbs by 40 industrialized nations up to 2012. It put untenable and arbitrary conditions that it will sign only when non-signatories like the US , China  and other economies with large emissions sign the treaty. This prompted Bolivia and Yemen and several other poor nations to state that it will stop all negotiations unless the industrialized nations agree to abide by the 2n d part of the Kyoto pact.

Japan's  argument is  untenable though its meaning could be well thought out . It is well known that the US and China together account for more than 50% of the carbon emissions the world produces. All countries must pressurize them to eventually sign the climate change treaty without which meaningful mitigation is not possible.
However if they have not signed the Kyoto pact before,they will not do so now. They can be part of a new climate change pact if that happens in the years to come but will definitely not sign Kyoto and cannot be persuaded to do so. Hence Japan's stand is nothing but an excuse to evade commitment. It is further breaking down the contentious  process of agreement that the UNFCCC today supervises.

Not that it matters. For unless the COP conferences start directly funding clean energy projects and rain forest plantation, they will not help stop climate change. All exercise in mitigation and carbon trading area
meaningless