CLIMATE negotiators are still scratching their heads about the significance of a pact signed by the US, Australia, China, India, Japan and South Korea last week.
The pact will encourage the transfer of “clean” energy technologies to developing countries. Does that represent “a complement to Kyoto”, as the US deputy secretary of state Robert Zoellick claimed? Is it, as Australia’s prime minister John Howard argued, a “fairer” alternative to the Kyoto protocol, because it has no mandatory controls on the greenhouse gas emissions of some countries and not others? Or is it, as environmentalists fear, a US scheme to wreck the protocol?…
