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160 Nations Endorse Pact on Global Warming Compliance
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Europe and the United States put off until next year their biggest dispute, whether to set limits on the amount of trading in "emissions" credits and other market mechanisms that would allow rich countries to have higher emissions at home in return for investing in "clean" technology abroad.
Europeans want strict limits on trading to force countries to undertake most of their emissions cuts domestically.
The modest gains on substantive issues in Buenos Aires left partisans on both sides of the climate debate unimpressed. European "greens" complained that the ministers had done little to help the environment.
"This meeting has been a trade fair, wrangling over how to keep the fossil fuel industry alive and burning," said Patrick Green of Friends of the Earth International.
Widely known but little acknowledged at the conference, he said, is the fact that Kyoto's emissions cuts alone will barely put a dent in greenhouse gas levels over the next few decades.
On that point, global warming activists and skeptics were in full agreement.
"It's complete lunacy," said Fred Singer, a University of Virginia scientist and prominent skeptic on global warming. "Kyoto is not going to achieve anything."
