Wallace Broecker - Kyoto Protocol Doomed - "A Drop In The Bucket"

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"The West's approach to fighting global warming, enshrined in the Kyoto protocol, will not work, a leading climate scientist said yesterday.

The struggle by developed countries to cut back their emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2), the principal greenhouse gas, will always be overtaken by the rising new emissions of the developing nations, led by China and India, who are not parties to the Kyoto treaty, said Professor Wallace Broecker of Columbia University, New York. Only radical new technologies for extracting carbon dioxide directly from the air would halt global warming, said the professor, who is regarded as one of the fathers of climate change studies.

Dr Broecker gave a blunt verdict on the effectiveness of the Kyoto treaty, on which Tony Blair is staking huge political capital next year, when Britain will chair both the EU and the G8 group of rich nations and try to put climate change at the top of the international agenda. He said: "What you guys are tinkering around with in Kyoto is just a drop in the bucket."

His view will be more unwelcome news for Mr Blair, who admitted yesterday that the Government's target for reducing CO2 emissions by 20 per cent by 2010 was likely to be missed by a large margin, although the Kyoto target is likely to be met.

EDIT

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/environment/story.jsp?story=591190