Smoke and Mirrors: The Kyoto Protocol and Beyond

The Kyoto Protocol (KP) is considered a necessary first step towards an effective future climate accord. As argued in this paper, however, the KP will likely fail because it has too many loopholes, inadequate governance structures and insufficient compliance provisions. This view is supported by case studies of Canada, Japan and the Netherlands. These countries are unlikely to achieve their self-imposed targets, or, if they do, the costs of compliance will be unacceptably high. Consequently, the difficulty of achieving agreement to reduce global emissions by half (as required to mitigate climate change) is greatly increased