>>The Kyoto protocol is the scam of the century. Even better than papal indulgences, where you at least got a promisory note.

I suppose another difference would be that historic papal indulgences don't affect you and certainly aren't foist on you, which makes your outrage vicarious, whereas the Kyoto protocol certainly affects Serbia and you whether you like it or not.

FWIW, New Zealand already has very clean energy by world standards, whereas Serbia has relatively dirty energy, making it easier for Serbia to improve and therefore sell credits to places like New Zealand that have unusually high agriculture emissions because there's a huge food export industry. Effectively you do better under Kyoto by starting with dirty energy and/or getting others to grow the food so they collect the demerits.

Also ironically: there's been opposition to hydro power in New Zealand on environmental grounds since the government built its first hydro dam in 1901. Protestors are more efficient today and the clean proportion of energy has slipped backward because of the extreme challenges of building another dam.