Greens want Kyoto to have Rolls-Royce, not Holden, rules. These allow countries to meet their Kyoto targets without reducing their emissions by the full amount in three different ways. Or they can buy and sell carbon on a global market simple carbon trading. This is one of the two major issues which has divided the EU and the US at COP6, bringing progress to a halt. At COP6 you can walk out of one expert briefing which predicts that global warming will double the number of deaths from heat stroke by 2020, into another, where the very notion of global warming is flatly denied.
Sinks are different.
There s no doubt trees absorb carbon, though there s argument about how much. But greens object to sinks because wood ultimately decays, releasing carbon into the atmosphere. They argue native vegetation will be cleared for forest plantations geared up to produce carbon credits, which is already happening in Tasmania. The initial US proposal on the scope of sinks, which was rejected by the EU on November 16, was an ambit claim so broad as to strain credulity. A second US proposal, to limit use of sinks to meeting 20 per cent of a country s Kyoto target, was also rejected, but may yet be revived.