The costs of Kyoto

Plenty of reasons to question the benefits of Kyoto and and to be wary of the costs, as noted in this piece from the Competitive Enterprise Institute: An Improved Climate. Excerpt:

Every year, environmental alarmists claim we have taken another step on the road to ruin. This year, they claim 2003 was the third-hottest year ever, and that its heat waves, floods, and tornadoes are evidence of global warming that will bring global catastrophe.

But, despite their claims, statist environmentalists will remember 2003 as a very bad year for their credibility. Above all, we should remember 2003 as the year that saw the death of the most economically damaging idea ever to come out of the United Nations, the Kyoto Protocol on climate change. ...

That is all good news, since the Kyoto treaty would devastate the economies of the industrialized world. One study shows that even Great Britain, the only major economy on course to meet its Kyoto targets, will lose 4 percent of its GDP and 1 million jobs as a result.

For Russia, struggling to pull itself out of its post-communist slump, the problem would be even greater. Small wonder that President Vladimir Putin's chief economic adviser, Andrei Illarionov, said recently, "Considering that the Kyoto Protocol is restricting economic growth, we must say it straight that it means dooming the country to poverty, backwardness and weakness."

In 2003, more and more people realized alarmism over climate change is based on uncertain science and bad economics. If that trend continues in 2004, it could be a very good year indeed.