The real change is +8% ( emissions for the manufacture of our production in China and other BRIC and new EU countries).

Kyoto has been a catastrophe for AGW. Only pure greenwash.

Thanks for reading my comment (I think). But I’m not following how your question relates to my comment. It seems kind of orthogonal to my comments/questions to Joe.

Further, I’m sure I’m misunderstanding you, but are you saying that Germans (or anyone else for that matter), who have the choice, should choose to accept the hardship of NOT addressing CO2 emissions?

The true outcome of effectively addressing CO2 emission means hardship. There is no way around this.

In putting together your post on Germany, please consider the new coal-fired power plants the Germans are building and the German Environmental Minister’s claims:

Claim 1: Building new coal power plants does not mean additional emissions.

Claim 2: Replacing old plants with new more efficient plants cuts emissions.

Claim 3: The cap puts an upper limit on emissions no matter how many plants you build.

Claim 4: You could build 100 new plants and not increase CO2 emissions.

Claim 5: Germany cannot say no to both coal and nuclear.

http://www.news-adhoc.com/ gabriel-betont-notwendigkeit-neuer-kohlekraftwerke-idna2009031322122/

Re claim 1: Relative to what?

Re claim 2: Relative to those old plants, yes, but how does building new coal plants affect emissions for the next 40 (80?) years relative to other replacement options?

To quote Joe:

“I don’t want some utility building a brand-new (traditional) coal plant that could last for 50 to 80 years and “offsetting” that by shutting down some decades old coal plant that wasn’t going to last many more decades anyway.”

“The bottom line is that we need an immediate moratorium on the construction of new traditional coal plants. That is a higher priority than a cap & trade bill, although such a bill is also a high priority. If the West cannot stop building such coal plants and quickly show the world that multiple alternatives — particularly efficiency and renewables — are practical and affordable, then how will we be able to convince the developing world, especially China and India, to stop building such coal plants within the decade?”

Or:

“You can’t go green by burning coal and buying offsets.”

Re claim 3: How does building new coal plants affect political climate for future cap tightening schedule?

Re claim 4: Relative to what? The focus obviously needs to be on actually cutting emissions, by a lot (not simply on not increasing them)–not just talking about ambitious targets for 2020 and then building coal plants. The question everyone wants Gabriel and Merkel to answer is: how would Germany cut 40% of its emissions while investing in more coal?

Re claim 5: Well, you get the idea.

Thanks.

When the European economies were booming, no one bothered to take this into account when emissions didn’t keep quite keep pace with targets. Now that we have a global downturn, expect Kyoto-bashers to attribute this.

Any way you look at it, Kyoto has been at least a partial success for Europe as a whole, but I tend to agree that their targets haven’t been all that strong.