If so, that could be a fuzzy finale to a treaty that has been nearly a decade in the making. Although it would not sound Kyoto's death knell, it would be a clear sign of the protocol's failure. And it would open the way for Washington to promote a rival blueprint that would in effect gut the pact.
Kyoto's origins go back to the crafting of the UN's Framework Convention on Climate Change - the 1992 Rio Convention.
In response to increasing concern over global warming, countries negotiated a skeleton agreement that aimed to cut emissions of carbon-rich "greenhouse" gases about 5 per cent by 2010 compared with the 1990 level.
But agreeing on exactly how those cuts would be carried out has been a bloody political battlefield, mired in notorious complexity.
President George W. Bush dealt Kyoto what many fear was a deadly blow, declaring he would not submit the accord for Senate ratification as it was "unfair" and tied only industrialised countries, not developing nations, to emissions reductions.
In the past few weeks, the EU has watched with growing anger as Australia, Canada and Japan declared allegiance to Kyoto while at the same time saying any deal would be ineffective without the US, the world's No 1 carbon polluter.
Dutch Environment Minister Jan Pronk, who will chair the Bonn talks, took a swipe at Australia and Canada last week, accusing their Governments of saying one thing in public, something else behind closed doors. And Japan's efforts to engineer concessions for the US had helped put climate change policy "in jeopardy," he said.
"We can no longer postpone this crucial decision, because if we do, the Kyoto Protocol really will become nothing more than a dead letter.
"If other Governments are to follow the US, there will be little hope for the Kyoto Protocol."
If Kyoto dies, the future for a worldwide policy on global warming looks grim.
Action would be delayed by "at least five years," said Bert Bolin, a Swedish scientist who has headed the UN's top scientific committee on climate change, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
Environmentalists fear that under a revamped Kyoto, national targets in emissions cuts would be lowered, or the 2010 deadline postponed, in order to reduce the cost for the US and its rivers of gas-guzzling cars. The deal would have little value.
Others are less pessimistic. Oran Young, a professor of environmental studies at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, said that Kyoto was "essentially dead," and its demise had opened the way to creating a broader, less politically volatile treaty, which was more likely to sustain public support.
Scientific opinion is, however, almost unanimous in regard to global warming.
The atmosphere is heating, the cause is man made, and there will be consequences for the climate a few decades from now.
How bad these effects will be and when they will start to strike is still uncertain. Climate change was inevitable, said IPCC chairman Robert Watson.
"It will adversely affect water security, food security, human health and displace potentially tens of millions of people."
www.nzherald.co.nz/climate
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)
United Nations Environment Program
World Meteorological Organisation
Framework Convention on Climate Change
Executive summary: Climate change impacts on NZ
IPCC Summary: Climate Change 2001
