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Last week at the UN's global warming meeting in Indonesia, polar bear costumed activists passed out huge pieces of cake. They were celebrating the 10th anniversary of the Kyoto Protocol, a treaty aimed at cutting greenhouse gas emissions. I wonder if they understand how their obsessive focus on Kyoto as the "only solution" hinders progress?

Kyoto is both a technical and a political failure. (If fully implemented, Kyoto will reduce global temperature by only 0.03 degrees Celsius.) Activists demanded that the U.S. sign Kyoto, but no Senate Democrats supported ratification of the treaty. Why? Because they reasonably believed it was a terrible deal. The U.S. would have had to bear up to two-thirds, or more, of the cost of Kyoto, likely more than all other nations combined.

A new approach is required. Gwyn Prins and Steve Rayner outline one in a new paper, The Wrong Trousers: Radically Rethinking Climate Policy. The authors believe the threats of climate change are real and that action is warranted. But they make explicit what every serious observer has known for quite sometime: "The Kyoto Protocol is a symbolically important expression of...concern about climate change. But as an instrument for achieving emissions reductions, it has failed. It has produced no demonstrable reductions in emissions or even in anticipated emissions growth."

"The politically charged rhetoric within which the climate change question is discussed means that anyone who questions...reduction goals...is regarded with suspicion. Unquestioning support for...Kyoto...has become a litmus test for determining who takes the threat of climate change seriously."

"...[Kyoto's] narrow focus on mitigating the emission of greenhouse gases (in which it has failed) has created a taboo on discussing other approaches, in particular, adaptation to climate change. ...For the past fifteen years, it has given the...public an illusion of effective action, tranquillizing political concern. This has been, perhaps, its most damaging legacy." (Read the whole thing on FREE's website.)

The most vulnerable countries are those that depend on agriculture and are at low latitudes. They need to be more resilient to climate change today. But reducing carbon emissions will not fix poor land-use practices, restore degraded local environments, improve emergency preparedness, or eliminate floods, droughts, or disease outbreaks.

Again Prins and Rayner: "Many...activists assume that slowing greenhouse-gas emissions has logical and ethical

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