Its economy has been growing at almost as fast a pace, around 7-8 per cent a year. Its energy use at the moment is much lower, for it has not experienced such rapid industrialisation and its building boom has been more muted. By the Kyoto target year of 2012 China will in all probability have become the world's third largest economy, behind only Japan and the US. Indeed were China not to have become the world's third-largest economy, everyone would be the worse for it as it would suggest some kind of political and economic collapse there, with all the misery that would entail.The other great global giant, India, is also increasing its energy use. Last year China installed as much new electricity generating capacity, mostly fossil fueled, as the entire electricity output of the UK.And we have seen nothing yet.
It is growing at around 9 per cent a year and relies heavily on fossil fuels for powering this growth. Unlike the Montreal Protocol, which had a clear objective and clear benefits - reducing the damage to the ozone layer - Kyoto is both badly constructed and uncertain in its impact. And the countries that matter most have not signed up.How should the thoughtful non-specialist respond to these conflicting perspectives? What we really want to know is whether in 20 or 30 years' time it will be seen as an important first step towards keeping the world a habitable place, or as a failed experiment, setting the wrong priorities and actually making future international co-operation more difficult to sustain. Perhaps the best way forward is to look at the criticisms of Kyoto and then see whether, despite those criticisms, it is still a useful process.Take first the argument that it is badly constructed and in particular that it excludes the country that is increasing its emissions fastest at the moment and which is now the second largest importer of oil: China China is already the world's fifth or sixth-largest economy. Countries that have refused to ratify Kyoto, most notably the US and Australia, are duly pilloried. President Bush has been particularly singled out as a bad global citizen.For others, this has been an exercise that at best is wishful thinking and at worst hypocrisy.
Russia has been a huge (and inefficient) user of energy and accounted for more than 17 per cent of global emissions in 1990. Suddenly the 55 per cent barrier was breached and the protocol could become law.For many people this is a time for rejoicing, an example of international co-operation for a common good. Like the Montreal Protocol of 1987, which banned the production of CFCs, it has demonstrated that countries were prepared to implement policies that might act against their short-term national self-interest in order to promote long-term global environmental aims. The US unsurprisingly is the world's largest user of energy (and hence accounts for 36 per cent of carbon emissions of the industrial countries) so the second hurdle became harder to surmount. But last November Russia, which had previously indicated it would not sign up, switched sides. This is accepted by most industrialised nations.But for the agreement to become international law two things had to happen. One was that 55 countries had to get it approved by their national legislatures.
