Spector: Obama's election means Kyoto is dead

Norman Spector in the Globe and Mail:

...the Toronto Star's former environment reporter, Peter Gorrie, predicts that Mr. Obama is about to put the final nail in the Kyoto coffin:

"Obama will not commit the United States to meet the emissions target - a cut to 6 per cent below 1990 levels by 2012 - that it accepted then rejected under the 1997 agreement. Instead, his goal is to get back down to 1990 levels by 2020.

Everyone wants and needs the United States to be part of the talks, and any solution. And, for the time being, Obama is unassailable. So, his target will be adopted.

Al Gore wouldn't commit the US to Kyoto's emissions targets either when he and then President Clinton declined to send the treaty to Congress where it faced certain defeat. Spector has more surprising news in his update:

On the op-ed page of Sunday's New York Times, Al Gore weighs in with advice for president-elect Barack Obama, which suggests that he, too, has given up on the U.S. endorsing Kyoto and its targets, notwithstanding it being an agreement he negotiated as vice-president.

Kyoto may be dead. That can't be a bad thing, but the real danger is yet to come in the form of an alternative, likely some type of cap and trade system, which will prove very lucrative to the likes of the Goracle.