Putin and Kyoto

A couple of weeks ago I was unable to resist my impulse to wildly speculate as to why Vladimir Putin would entertain the idea of ratifying Kyoto. Shooting from the hip, I offered the following two reasons:

What could the Russians be thinking? This can't possibly help their struggling market economy. Is that the point? Could it be that Putin wants the Russian economy to fail, so that a return to communism seems the only natural choice?

The other possible explanation is that Russia is preying on European anti-Americanism. For over 50 years the United States and Europe benefited economically from their alliance. In a new world order, the Russians may see an
opportunity to wedge themselves between America and Europe.

If the U.S becomes the lone holdout from Kyoto, it is not hard to imagine a system of tariffs implemented to make U.S. goods next to impossible to buy in Kyoto-ratifying
nations. It's also not hard to imagine Russia positioning itself to take advantage of such a situation.

Today, Bonner Cohen of the National Center for Public Policy Research offers a few more ideas (link via Winds of Change). One is that Putin would sign the treaty but then stiff Europe. Who will monitor the emissions? Or will it be self-reported? He certainly will not fear an invasion by Europe if he is found in non-compliance. Could they pool together and muster a strongly-worded letter?

Cohen notes another angle I missed, namely that if Kyoto is ratified, and enforced in Europe but not the U.S., many U.S. companies doing business in Europe will be adversely affected. He goes on to speculate about U.S. acceptance of Kyoto:

"Any rollback in emissions necessarily would throw some very large grains of sand in the gears of the U.S. economy, the biggest energy user in the world," [columnist Tom] Bray noted earlier this month. That would permit Europe's moribund socialist economies to regain worldwide competitiveness without enduring the political pain of rolling back government handouts.

And it would allow Russia's dynamic brand of state capitalism to move forward at the expense of U.S. workers. If a Russian double-cross is imminent, Putin, alone among the world's leaders, will have a found a way to milk Kyoto for his own benefit.

Would John Kerry support some version of Kyoto? He has berated George Bush for taking the work of a hundred nations over the span of a decade and throwing it out the window. Of course, that's the true difference between a capitalist and a leftist. The capitalist does not value work if that work does not produce anything of value. Bush sees nothing of value in the output of Kyoto, while Kerry seems to think if someone worked hard on it, the plan merits consideration.

Absent a U.S. endorsement of Kyoto, Cohen's scenario for European prosperity (becoming more
competitive by making the U.S. less so) seems impossible. However the double-cross by Putin could still give Russia a competitive advantage over both Europe and the United States. The former advantage would arise out of Russian industry skirting the rules, and the latter because of tariffs that would surely be put up by all signatory nations to make U.S. goods look less attractive compared to those from member states. Russia will have all the privileges of official member status, without paying any of the dues.

It's brilliant. Will anyone stop them?