Moscow won’t join the second phase of the Kyoto Protocol, which starts on January 1st 2013. Russia decided to discontinue its participation in the protocol because the world’s major producers of greenhouse gases – the United States, China and India – are still refusing to commit themselves to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. --
Voice of Russia, 31 December 2013
Ukraine may join Russia in shunning the extended Kyoto Protocol after United Nations envoys approved a text the two nations didn’t agree with, according to the Centre for European Policy Studies in Brussels. --
Business Week, 14 December 2012
The controversial and ineffective Kyoto Protocol’s first stage comes to an end today, leaving the world with 58 per cent more greenhouse gases than in 1990, as opposed to the five per cent reduction its signatories sought. --Max Paris,
CBC News, 31 December 2012
As of today, the Kyoto protocol is a zombie treaty. It’s a corpse that keeps moving, but it’s dead. Kyoto died Monday at midnight when the greenhouse gas cuts it set for 37 industrialized nations between 2008 and 2012 expired. --Lorrie Goldstein,
Toronto Sun, 1 January 2012
We are entering a new Renaissance in the oil market, not just in the US, but globally as well. New technology, slower growth in the emerging markets over the next decade, and an era where a decade of high prices will finally bear some fruit with market dynamics working as their supposed to leading to more supply, and an eventual reduction in prices. --EconMatters,
NASDAC, 30 December 2012
A “rational optimist” like me thinks the world will go on getting better for most people at a record rate, not because I have a temperamental or ideological bent to good cheer but because of the data. Poverty, hunger, population growth rates, inequality, and mortality from violence, disease and weather — all continue to plummet on a global scale. But a global optimist can still be a regional pessimist. When asked what I am pessimistic about, I usually reply: bureaucracy and superstition. Using those two tools, we Europeans seem intent on making our future as bad as we can. It is entirely possible that ten years from now the world as a whole will be 50 per cent richer, but Europeans will be 50 per cent poorer. --Matt Ridley,
The Times, 2 January 2013
