How these issues are decided will determine whether the Kyoto Protocol becomes a first step towards climate protection or a 'Cheat's Charter' that will allow industrialised countries to increase rather than reduce emissions. The meeting in the Hague this week is the culmination of three years of wrangling and, in theory, is where cards must be laid on the table and agreement reached about how the developed world will achieve their individual targets. But, as the prospect of legally binding targets gets nearer, concerted efforts are being made to insert loopholes into the Kyoto Protocol. If accepted these loopholes could result in an environmentally ineffective Treaty that could actually legitimise an increase in CO2 emissions.
Fossil fuels are at the core of the current climate crisis.
As global temperatures rise the planet's climate system is being thrown into disarray. This would effectively allow them to carry on business as usual and still nominally achieve their targets. The danger inherent in this approach is that forests and other vegetation only store CO2 temporarily and it can be released back into the atmosphere rapidly at any time. Through photosynthesis, trees take CO2 out of the atmosphere and store it as wood carbon. Carbon is also stored in plants on the forest floor, in leaf and forest debris and in forest soils.