Tracy,

Though it certainly is true we are not going to meet the kyoto goals the conclusions in some of these article are outright ridiculous. Rather than explaining why, besides asuming economical forces, it gives the impression that only brittian has developped has put considerable effort in meeting his goal.

The fact of the matter is that some countries have set the goal to strict, and meeting their goal was essentially doomed to fail from the start. Also I see some mention that the US has its own policy and has reached some success in reducing polution. Well, that is not difficult to do as the US has been one of the great poluters in the world. If you look at the energy consumption of an average household in the US, you'll see that it is several times higher than in european countries.

The european countries do not see anything in the US approach of this issue as we simply do not have the luxury to do this. Europe, certainly western europe is way to crowded to let polution rise. In amsterdam for example people suffer from polution every day and a few 1000 people nation wide die too early because of this. So doing nothing is not an option.

There always will be a tension between economy and environment. That is simply something we have to accept. If all industrialised countries had signed the kyoto agreement, then there would not be such an imbalance.

Rather than subjectively talking about percentages in increase or decrease, which does not say anything how poluting a country is in absolute numbers, all that matters in the end is the polution per capita. I'm confident that in 1010 the US will be at the top of most poluting countries despite trying to degenerate europe's standpoint on kyoto.

There are a lot of initiatives happening here in europe. For example, in holland they try to keep cars from the city to make the air in the city cleaner. They wan't to tax bigger cars more, New diesels have to have better carbon filters in 2008. They force the car industry to make cars cleaner. Also we have an 'energy tax' which makes us aware of out energy consumption. Our energy company has send us a device to check the energy consumption of all electrical devices at home. It certainly made me aware that turning off my computer at the end of the day will safe me about a 100 euro a year. We should however do more about using wind and solar energy. for example my neighbour has some solar panels on the roof and she says that she hardly pays anything to the energy company anymore. Those are good initiatives to make a better enviroment, though they might not have enough effect as we wish, but we have to start somewhere.

Walter,