In his first official act as a new prime minister, Kevin Rudd today signed paperwork that will lead to Australia's ratification of the Kyoto Protocol, further isolating the U.S. on climate issues just as negotiators are meeting in Bali to start work on Kyoto's successor.
Mr. Rudd's signature would seem to bolster the United Nations-sponsored Bali conference's momentum, already building since the Nobel Peace Prize was co-awarded to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and its work documenting human-induced global warming. The latest scientific warning came just yesterday, in a study published by peer-review journal Nature Geoscience, which found the earth's tropical zones have begun to spread toward the poles....MORE
