The Kyoto Protocol, a UN treaty on climate change,very nearly given up as dead by even its most ardent promoters when US president George Bush abandoned it, has received a fresh lease of life in Bonn this week at the latest session of the Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC-COP6) or the climate change conference. But how significant a contribution it will make, with its limited agreement and minus the US, to reducing greenhouse gases responsible for global warming, remains to be seen. Would the cause of global warming have been better served, for instance, if the Kyoto agreement had been allowed a quiet burial and work begun between individual countries on trading schemes and carbon taxes in its place?
