Sometimes a devious political advocacy strategy creates more future pain than the present relief offered by it. If Competitive Enterprise Institute, for example, had endorsed the Kyoto climate protocol years ago, their supporters and members would have suffered a pretty shallow knick in comparison to what's coming next year or the year following. Of course, because they'd taken to believing their own propaganda, they probably didn't realize it could come to this.

It will be most interesting to watch how various industry sectors profile their attitudes toward the more stringent climate mitigation provisions coming. Any industry or front group that publicly opposes an aggressive new climate treaty is going to stand out as greedy and anti-social, possibly at risk of losing market share or contributors, respectively, due to self-tarnishing of image.

The terms of the international agreement on greenhouse gas emissions that will follow the Kyoto Protocol will be even stricter, economist Mohan Munasinghe, vice president of the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), said here Friday.

According to Munasinghe, who was participating in a seminar here to discuss the application of the IPCC recommendations locally, stronger international consensus has now been reached on the need for stricter measures.

The new rules that countries all over the world will have to follow in order to avoid runaway global warming will start to be discussed in December in Bali, Indonesia, and will have to be defined by 2009.

The Kyoto Protocol, aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions, expires in 2012, and much of what it established has not been followed by the most economically developed countries, especially the United States, which did not sign the document.

"Unfortunately, we know that some of the goals of the document signed in Kyoto will not be accomplished, but the new agreement must be stricter because the evidence of global warming is clearer and there is more pressure from society on politicians to act," said Munasinghe.

Via::China View, "IPCC: New climate change agreement to be stricter than Kyoto" Image credit::Tufts University, GDAE, Mohan Munasinghe

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