That Mr Bush is challenging Kyoto on this point troubles many, because it suggests that he may have deeper philosophical problems with the Rio approach to climate change. A third objection from the new administration concerns cost. Some of this, too, is posturing. There is no energy crisis in America, just a botched deregulation of electricity in California. The costs of the Kyoto Protocol, as with everything else involving climate change, are not known with any precision.
Economic analyses range from zero or even net gain to staggeringly high.
But most economists agree that, if the treaty is implemented in a more flexible way, to allow market forces more play and encourage innovation and investment in clean technologies, the cost can be substantially reduced. Such provisions are envisaged in the language of the Kyoto pact, and were the starting-point for the Clinton team negotiating in The Hague. But they fell foul of the Europeans' suspicions of the market. The EU delegation insisted on a variety of measures, such as restrictions on emissions trading, that would have made the deal more rigid and more costly than it had been to begin with. As for the fourth point, about congressional politics, there is no doubt that the Senate was never going to ratify Kyoto as it stood.