Well that's a different slant on things. The Kyoto framework gives the sheiks a free pass. Could we extend this line of argument to...(I'm thinking. This could be fun).
From Finfacts (Ireland):
...Up to now the climate discussion has focused one-sidedly on the reduction of demand for fossil fuel and has neglected the supply side. In his Thuenen Lecture at the conference of the Verein für Socialpolitik, Ifo president, Hans-Werner Sinn, points out that supply and demand together determine how much fossil fuel is extracted and thus also determine the pace with which carbon is released into the atmosphere, creating the greenhouse effect.
The EU's consumption reducing measures are, in his opinion, in vain if the oil sheiks and the other owners of fossil fuels do not cut back their supply. The effect of measures like those of the EU are then not only small but non-existent. As Sinn explains: "With the rigid conduct of the suppliers, the world market price is pushed so far under the level that otherwise would have been achieved so that those countries that do nothing with regard to climate protection will use that much more fossil fuels than that which is saved be the EU. The Chinese continue to step up their CO2-intensive expansion policies and the Americans drive even more SUVs than they used to."
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