Kyoto Protocol's Counterpart or Nemesis?

The BBC has a good article about the first meeting of the Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate.

It's an interesting mixture of states in the "partnership." While Japan is a party to the Kyoto Protocol, the others are either not parties (U.S.A. and Australia) or are not required by the Kyoto Protocol to reduce their emissions (China, India and South Korea).

Here's the article's summary of the different approach to reducing emissions and the predictably negative reaction of the "greens":

The first ministerial meeting of a controversial alliance promising economic growth with low carbon emissions has opened in Sydney.

The Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate aims to develop and promote technologies such as "clean coal", nuclear and renewables.

Green groups say the body aims to emasculate the Kyoto Protocol.

The meeting involves politicians and industrialists from Australia, China, India, Japan, South Korea and the US.

It will probably be quite a while before we know if this approach will make any difference, but with the Kyoto parties faltering in their supposedly mandatory efforts to reduce emissions it seems best to push another way of going at the problem. Kyoto's reliance on mandatory reductions at the cost of slower economic growth or even stagnation seems doomed by the fact that no country is likely to take steps it knows will slow its economy -- no matter what the treaty says.