Reactions

Randomly browsing this afternoon, I stumbled across this post from the Strong World blog. In my opinion, this is a flawed attack on a worthy target – the Kyoto protocol. As the only international agreement aimed at reducing climate change, Kyoto is a laudable effort. The fact that it’s come into effect late and will have marginal effect anyway thanks to the political compromises involved in drawing it up do not negate the immense achievement of getting something like this agreed in the first place. However, I wanted to reiterate some of my reaction to this post here.

Without wanting to be gung-ho in support of Kyoto (as I said, it’s seriously flawed even if you do want to stop climate change), there are a couple of serious flaws in the reasoning in this post. Most crucially, the worry about “harmonising patent laws” across the globe (or, at least, among signers of the Protocol!). Any observation of what’s actually happening worldwide with patent law will show that the actual effect is that US laws are being imposed on the rest of the world (witness what’s happening in the EU at the moment with software patents), similar to what’s already happened with copyright law (such as the ludicrous extension to 70 years in various countries, and the various spawn of the DMCA). It’s extraordinarily unlikely that the USA’s laws will “harmonise” with the rest of the world – it’s the rest of the world that will be brought into line with the USA. To the USA’s benefit and no one else’s.
Imagining, as the original author seems to, that the whole of Kyoto (and, by implication, the whole edifice upon which it was built) is simply about ruining the USA is naive and paranoid. Indeed, the structure of the Kyoto agreement was almost entirely dictated by the industrialised nations he imagines as being its targets. Indeed, the real basis of Kyoto is the immense weight of scientific evidence that human activities are having harmful effects on the environment, especially our contributions to global rises on CO₂ levels.
I totally agree with his closing sentiment, though – Kyoto is not really about the environment but about politics and profit. However, the answer is surely not to abandon the whole idea of combating climate change but to change politics (and profit) so that they work towards the sane end of ensuring our mutual future.

pax et bonum

Article posted at 4:51pm on 25 January 2005
Category: Musing, Politics, Science, General