Editorial: Forget the jealousy, let's think globally

The anger and frustration that has followed the collapse at the weekend of global talks on climate change, has mostly been directed at the United States and its allies. It should not be. A close reading of events at The Hague makes it clear the US made considerable concessions near the end. It was the environment ministers of Europe, particularly of France and the Nordic states, whose intransigence has dealt a blow to hopes born at Kyoto three years ago.

The European ministers appear to have fallen captive to green movements who seem more interested in deindustrialising the developed world than in finding ways to neutralise the increase of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. At Kyoto, where nations agreed to reduce carbon dioxide emissions to 1990 levels by 2012, there was already a good idea in circulation about how countries might be induced to meet the targets. A system of tradeable emission rights and credits for "carbon sinks" such as forests was in the air.

Something such as that is probably the only practical way to get general compliance with a global agreement on climate change. The alternative, demanding that all developed countries reduce their use of carbon fuels, cannot be enforced and is unlikely to be observed.

A system of tradeable rights and credits, however, has many attractions. It could ensure that additional emissions of carbon dioxide were taken out of the atmosphere by additional planting of trees and other crops. Countries with plenty of land available for such crops could sell emission credits. In many cases they would be under-developed countries and the revenue would be a boon to them. Countries rich in industry but with little space for carbon sinks could pay to plant forests in other countries.

That is the general idea. There are, as always, technical issues to be resolved, such as agreeing on the crops that absorb carbon, the rate at which they do so and the way they might be monitored. Those were the sort of questions to be tackled at The Hague in the quest to put flesh on the bones of the Kyoto Protocol.

Naturally enough, the idea of tradeable emissions is embraced enthusiastically by the US, Canada and Australia. New Zealand has been in that camp, too, but with the change of Government our position is unclear. At The Hague, Energy Minister Pete Hodgson appears to have sided with the Europeans on issues of carbon sinks but remained in favour of tradeable emission rights. He has heard the concerns of the New Zealand forest industry that carbon sinks would encourage, and probably subsidise, pine plantations everywhere, distorting world markets.

Environmentalists criticise carbon sinks for the possibility that they will encourage old forests to be replaced by monoculture crops, since young growing plantations are said to absorb more carbon dioxide than established trees. But problems such as that could be covered by the conditions of an agreement. Where there is a will ...

The tragedy of The Hague is that the Europeans, Britain apart, could not see past the fact that a system of carbon sink offsets would benefit the US - "the world's largest polluter," as they like to put it. The global interest became entirely obscured by intercontinental jealousy.

A rare opportunity has been lost. Talk of another gathering somewhere, sometime next year is too vague. It will require responsible heads of government now to get together, clean up the mess their environment ministers have left, and think globally again.