Global warming and Kyoto--an update

If you've read any of my blogs, you know one of my targets has been the global-warming crazies, who have attempted to wreck the American economy. Now there's a recent  update from  The Wall Street Journal regarding the Kyoto Protocol on climate change. This makes interesting reading.

 The article points out that the lefty environmentalists screamed out that the future of humanity was said to hinge on the Kyoto implementation. Did you know it expired on New Year's Day? I didn't.  Adopted in 1997 and in force since 2005, the U.N. compact was intended to lock its signatories into curbing or cutting their greenhouse-gas emissions relative to 1990 levels. It didn't work out as planned.

Here's where it gets interesting when we see the results of the solemn agreement forged in Kyoto. Japan promised a 6% reduction relative to its 1990 levels, but instead saw a 7.4% increase, despite 20 years of economic stagnation. Australia, where growth has been more robust, pledged to let carbon increase by no more than 8%. Instead its 1990-2010 emissions rose 47.5%. The Netherlands promised a 6% cut but wound up with 20% higher emissions by the end of 2010. Canada, one of the pact's most enthusiastic early backers, committed to a 6% cut but saw a 24% emissions increase above 1990 levels. In 2011 Ottawa announced it was withdrawing from Kyoto to avoid the penalties it would have owed for missing its target. New Zealand, Russia and Japan have followed Canada's lead and are now officially out of Kyoto's carbon strictures, while the world's largest emitters in China and the U.S. were never in. Now only Australia and the EU remain.

How did the U. S. do? Not bad. It saw an emissions increase of only 10.3% between 1990 and 2010, despite economic and population growth that outpaced most of the industrialized world. Some of the thanks here go to the shale-gas revolution, which uses technology that still hasn't gotten past most European regulators. This triumph of American ingenuity might never have happened if Al Gore had managed to drag the U.S. into Kyoto 15 years ago. I'm so grateful that didn't happen.

What have we learned from this?  In its day, the Kyoto Protocol did its share of economic damage by distorting energy markets and encouraging job-killing legislation. Some of that damage will remain. But the main thing we see is the typical pattern--scream about the problem and then watch the science refute your scare-tactics, with the result that wiser heads can ignore the tantrums.