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Sponsored by the Natural Environment Research Council |  |  | 
|  |  | | (This debate is closed and is a read-only archive) | | Why Kyoto is like recycling
[7-Jan-2002]
| Max Beran is correct, Kyoto is like recycling (Reader responses, 20 December). Not because each is a 'good thing', as he suggests, but because both are misguided and soft-headed. Like Kyoto, recycling is lead in the saddle of economic development for some (probably most) of the time, though, admittedly, on a much smaller scale.
| Like Kyoto, recycling reflects ideological position. Kyoto and recycling are both vague and imprecise processes based on sets of complex relationships which perhaps only a handful of people in the world understand reasonably well, but which have become the bases of global industries. Who cares about the science so long as you know how to profit from it?
| Like Kyoto, recycling was primarily the product of the EU bureaucracy. Perhaps it is something to do with an authoritarian tradition that is not shared by the USA or Australia, the Kyoto non-conformists. Like Kyoto, recycling is notable for its lack of broadscale, validated science-based research to support its efficacy.
| The fact that Max Beran equates the two is quite interesting, because the fact-free 'must be a good thing' defence is about all that Kyoto or recycling have going for them. The best that can be said for recycling is that it is probably valid for some recyclables in some places some of the time, as long as you don't look too hard at the cost of the inputs. The best that can be said for Kyoto is that we've wasted only a decade or so to date on pretend science and dumbed-down politics. In Australia late last year we had the spectacle of the British deputy prime minister, John Prescott, arguing that everybody should sign up to Kyoto because the UK had some heavy showers a while ago, the heaviest since, ooh, the eighteenth century or thereabouts, resulting in floods, clear evidence that greenhouse is really, truly happening! So what caused the eighteenth century floods? Anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions?
| Well, one other minor quibble. Whenever there's a flood, a warm afternoon, or a high tide, the usual media toadies (in your town, where ever you are) are apt to whip out some far-fetched greenhouse doomsday story. In the media, it is what passes for unified field theory: greenhouse causes everything; everything is evidence for greenhouse. With virtually the entire northern hemisphere under snow and ice for the past couple of months, however, the media greenhouse boosters have been strangely silent. What's up, guys? Computer screens frozen?
| Ken Henrick, Australia
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