What, if anything, did the Kyoto agreement achieve?

brianthebard

Besides giving most of the world another chance to feel smug about their moral and intellectual superiority over America as a whole, what did Kyoto achieve? And were any of those achievements unable to be done by the EU or UN or other groups who may have wanted to deal with teh eco issue?

probe

brianthebard wrote: »

Besides giving most of the world another chance to feel smug about their moral and intellectual superiority over America as a whole, what did Kyoto achieve? And were any of those achievements unable to be done by the EU or UN or other groups who may have wanted to deal with teh eco issue?

The Kyoto agreement is an irrelevant nothing so far. Because it focuses on the NEGATIVE (reducing CO2). Instead of thinking the issue through to its logical conclusion, and presenting a digestible positive, user-friendly package to the world.

Take road transport – a major polluter – CO2 + dozens of other chemical nasties, not to mention noise, traffic accidents, relatively high fatality rates, and other associated health issues (eg respiratory diseases). Solution – get people out of their cars as much as possible, by making their quality of life far better on public transport.

Replace Kyoto with a global, integrated green public transport treaty. Encouraging countries to set targets for moving people to electric public transport powered by green energy. Totally integrated ticketing and communications protocols across national borders.

Let’s assume one is travelling from Athlone to Zurich or Munich. A bus or tram takes you from within walking distance of your home to the railway station. Space for your baggage on board. Go to the ticket machine in the railway station, insert your payment card and it spews out your rail ticket to the airport, your boarding pass for the flight, asks you how many bags you want to check-in for the flight and prints out airline routing baggage tags, gives you a ticket from Zurich airport to your hotel, and checks you in for your hotel room based on real-time updated ETA data at the pre web reserved SAS Radisson hotel in Zurich.

You dump your bags at the checked baggage counter at Athlone rail station and won’t have to worry about them again until you arrive at Zurich airport. You can check in for flights, get your boarding pass, and dump your baggage at most Swiss railway stations – why not everywhere else too? Your train from Athlone goes straight to Dublin airport after a 3 min stop in Dublin city. You get off at the airport, on an escalator and walk straight to the gate. The system takes care of your checked baggage.

[If you drove to the airport, you would be forced to drag your cases with you to a check-in desk with Ryanairistic 2km long lines, screaming babies, and “Mr Murphy you have 1 kg too much baggage”, our limit is 15kg, you will have to go to counter 289 and queue up for 20 minutes to pay €8 to Michael O’Leary, and then haul your suitcase back to the check-in pig inefficient Oirish style to check-in again for your flight and receive your boarding pass].

Back to the Kyoto v.3 integrated travel system, you arrive at Zurich airport and collect your bag and go straight to the railway station, pre-ticketed at Athlone station. En route to your hotel, you get a text message advising you that you are checked in to room 1217. You go straight to the room, using your bank card to open the door, without having to queue up at reception to check-in or get a key card. (Anyone who regularly arrives on airport shuttle buses at airport hotels with 20 other people all wanting to check-in at the same time will appreciate this!).

The only way for public transport to win is to make life better for the customer. The only way for Kyoto to win is to make life better for the customer. Otherwise people will fight the system and it will be a waste of money, and people will continue to drive everywhere and the planet will continue to p*** into the wind, going nowhere.

Similar principles apply to more local every day commuter journeys.

Refreshing thinking is called for from all parties to deal with the issue.

.probe

maniac101

brianthebard wrote: »

Besides giving most of the world another chance to feel smug about their moral and intellectual superiority over America as a whole, what did Kyoto achieve?

The Kyoto protocol was significant in that it furthered the concept of national responsibility for greenhouse gas emissions. It set clear targets for GHG emission reductions/increases in 41 countries - targets that became binding once the Russians ratified in 2004. The protocol was never intended to stipulate specific measures to reach the national targets.

In this part of the world, the Kyoto protocol directly led to the establishment of the Emissions Trading System which, although deeply flawed, will probably provide a template for a better more equitable and effective system once the Kyoto period comes to an end in 2012.

In Ireland specifically, the ETS, subsumed from EU law, was the only piece of legislation in the statute books up to 2007 that directly addressed GHG emissions.

And were any of those achievements unable to be done by the EU or UN or other groups who may have wanted to deal with teh eco issue?

The Kyoto protocol was drawn up by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate change, which of course as the name suggests, is a UN initiative. Climate change is a global problem and tackling it requires a multilateral approach, involving as many nations as possible. Therefore the UN is the correct forum. A major problem with Kyoto was that a couple of the big polluters failed to ratify it. Any initiative that would involve a smaller subset of nations would be even less effective.