Sometimes international negotiations simply cannot be allowed to fail. The Kyoto Protocol on climate change is in that category. The industrial contribution to global warming may be a matter of dispute but that is not an argument for doing nothing. Today's state of knowledge argues rather for taking agreed precautions that will limit the increase of carbon emissions without imposing possibly needless restraints on the engines of global prosperity.
The targets set at Kyoto in 1997 were wildly optimistic and became more so as a result of growth generated by the long United States boom. The agreement was mitigated somewhat by the prospect of tradeable emission rights and credit for forestry and crops which could absorb the greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide. But when environment ministers of the signatory Governments met at The Hague last year, many of the European ministers were not in the mood for those "loopholes", as they called them.
The Europeans, many of them from Green Parties in coalition Governments, let those talks collapse rather than agree to a British compromise. This week in Bonn they changed their tune. Do not be fooled by their chest-beating and self-congratulations at the 11th-hour agreement. Our own Pete Hodgson excelled most in hyperbole, pronouncing the deal "probably the most comprehensive and difficult agreement in world history".
In fact, they have agreed to smaller emission reductions and "loopholes" more generous than those they refused to accept at The Hague. Back then, they were no doubt counting on Al Gore to win the American presidency and to embrace hair-shirt environmentalism.
Instead, the US produced a President who turned out to believe that the Kyoto direction was flawed and appeared not to care whether any international response to global warming might be found.
