Chris's Random Ramblings
Michael wrote an interesting blog entry about Australia's GHG target under the Kyoto protocol. I've often wondered how Australia managed to negotiate an increase of 8% from 1990 levels when it appeared that other countries were reducing their emmissions. So this time I actually read some of the report on what the EU countries have achieved that he linked to.
Assuming I'm reading it correctly there are a number individiual countries within the EU-15 who have target increases higher than Australia - Ireland (+13%), Spain (+15%), Greece (+25%), Portugal (+27%). Sweden's target is less than Australia's but is also an increase on 1990 levels (+4%). A bit scarily, even with those targets its estimated that Ireland, Portugal and Spain won't make their targets. The report indicates that the heavy lifting of actually reducing GHG emmissions are being done by countries like Luxemburg (-28%), Germany (-21%) and Denmark (-21%).
So in that context, Australia having an 8% increase target doesn't look quite so odd, though I do agree with Michael that given Australia was able to make the target anyway not ratifying Kyoto doesn't make much sense.