The climate crisis and the imminent oil and gas depletion crisis are the results of a dysfunctional economic system which the Kyoto Protocol alone cannot repair, writes Richard Douthwaite.
Celebrations will take place in Dublin and around the world today to mark the coming into force of the Kyoto Protocol, the first legally-binding international agreement to control greenhouse gas emissions.
The festivities are understandable after a massive 10-year effort involving annual two-week meetings around the world with 5,000 or more participants.
Nevertheless, since the implementation of the protocol is likely to reduce the emissions from the nations committed to it by perhaps 2 per cent, the words "the elephant laboured mightily and brought forth . . . a mouse" spring to mind.
Indeed, if one recalls that the British government's chief scientist, Sir David King, warned the world last April that Antarctica could be the only continent suitable for mammalian life by the end of the present century if greenhouse gas emissions continued to rise unchecked, the protocol has to be seen as a grossly inadequate response to what is almost certainly the gravest problem ever to face humankind.
Accordingly, the only ones who should be celebrating are those of us who believe that the protocol really does mark the start of a process that will bring emissions down to perhaps 20 per cent of their current level within, say, 50 years. This is the sort of target that will have to be met if global temperatures are not to rise by more than two 2 degrees above their pre-industrial level.
Two degrees is the maximum many experts consider we can get away with without running an unacceptably high risk of setting off a runaway warming, leading to the circumstances Sir David King feared.
Of this increase, a 0.6 degree rise has already taken place, and the world will warm by at least another degree thanks to emissions that are already in the atmosphere.
We therefore have very little time left to bring emissions down.
The urgency to do so was heightened recently when figures from the US atmospheric sampling station on the Mauna Loa volcano in Hawaii showed that over the past two years, the rate at which one of the main greenhouse gases, carbon dioxide, has been accumulating in the atmosphere has doubled.
This could indicate that the natural sinks which have been absorbing around half of human emissions of the gas have become saturated and are shutting down.
So should we celebrate?
Does the fact that, thanks to the Kyoto Protocol, 35 industrialised countries and the European Community are legally bound to reduce their combined emissions of six major greenhouse gases during the five-year period 2008-2012 to below 1990 levels, really mark the start of a determined international effort to limit climate change?
Regrettably, there is no evidence that it does. At last December's Conference of the Parties to the Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP-10) in Buenos Aires, there was no sense of urgency or crisis at all. The US delegation aside, the 6,200 participants seemed content that something was about to happen at last, and that they had until 2012 to agree what the next step should be.
The only consensus about the nature of that step was that it should not prevent the developed countries' economies from continuing to grow.
Unfortunately, if this attitude prevails, finding a solution to the climate crisis will be impossible since there is a very close relationship between economic growth and increased energy use. It's very hard to have one without the other.
True, the energy required for growth could come from emissions-free sources such as the wind or the waves, but it would take the investment of an enormous amount of energy to get those sources on stream on anything like the required scale.
On the other hand, if the rich countries could find a way of stopping growing without their economies collapsing, they could immediately cut their fossil energy use, and hence their emissions, by roughly half. Such a way would involve changing the way that money is put into circulation, as an article on the Foundation for the Economics of Sustainability (FEASTA) website (www.feasta.org), explains.
All the discussions at COP-10 were based on the assumption that, climate change apart, a business-as-usual scenario was possible and the world economy could continue to grow. FEASTA was the only one to put out a publication and hold a press conference to say that indefinite rich country growth was a forlorn hope, since the annual amount of energy available to the world from oil and gas is expected to peak around 2015. It will then fall off at perhaps 2 per cent a year.
Both the climate crisis and the imminent oil and gas depletion crisis are the results of a dysfunctional economic system, and unless the world is prepared to make radical changes to that system, neither can be cured. Unfortunately, the number of people in Buenos Aires thinking in those terms could be counted on the fingers on one hand.
As a result, the world community does not know how to halt climate change. Argentina, the host country in Buenos Aires, recognised this and proposed holding a series of exploratory seminars. However, this initiative was blocked by the United States which insisted that there should be no written or oral report of any such meetings.
So, my fear is that the Kyoto Protocol represents not the turning of the tide, but the high water mark of humanity's attempt to head off a catastrophic global warming.
If that's something to celebrate, enjoy the day.
Richard Douthwaite attended COP-10 as one of two NGO representatives in the official Irish delegation. He represented Feasta, the Foundation for the Economics of Sustainability.