PARIS, Oct 22 (AFP) - The Kyoto Protocol for tackling global warming is at last poised to take effect -- but it will have to struggle along without the country which is the biggest source of the problem: the United States.
Whoever wins the White House on November 2, the world's biggest polluter, accounting by itself for a quarter of global carbon emissions, is likely to remain outside Kyoto for many years to come.
One one side is President George W. Bush, a bogey figure among greens for having ditched Kyoto in March 2001. Bush even questioned the scientific evidence for global warming, a stance that made him the butt of withering scorn from experts and activists alike.
But -- break it to them gently -- the environmentalists' preference, Democratic contender John Kerry, is no Kyoto fan either.
He tacitly shares Bush's argument it would cost America too much to honour the commitment it signed up to in 1997 and whose rulebook it largely shaped.
Both Bush and Kerry "have agreed that they can't do Kyoto," Jonathan Pershing, former president Bill Clinton's climate negotiator, told AFP.
"There is a consensus in US (politics) that it is virtually impossible for the US to meet Kyoto without an economic cost we're not prepared" to meet, he said. "The Kyoto Protocol doesn't enjoy much support."
Kerry's opposition to Kyoto is in fact on the record.
He joined a 95-0 vote of a Senate resolution in 1997 that warned against making Kyoto unfair or too burdensome for the American economy. Under US law, a two-thirds Senate majority is needed to approve a treaty.
Even though they share the same instincts about Kyoto's political feasability, Kerry and Bush have very different views about global warming.
Unlike Bush, Kerry has no doubts about the scientific evidence for the danger.
Whereas Bush is unilateralist, Kerry is warm about multilateralism.
What this means, though, is unclear.
Kerry has not spelt out whether this means dovetailing national measures with some of those in Kyoto or perhaps doing more initiatives under Kyoto's parent treaty, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC), of which the United States remains a member.
Kerry also has a somewhat tougher approach on energy efficiency and government help for promoting clean energy. Bush has a voluntarist, free-market approach to which he has added help for hydrogen research.
Kyoto requires industrialised countries to cut or stabilise their emissions by a timetable of 2008-12 as compared with their 1990 levels. The United States signed up to a cut of seven percent.
But successive years of strong growth, negligible efforts in energy efficiency and the failure to switch to non-fossil fuels mean that, as of today, US emissions are nearly a fifth higher than they were in 1990 and the country is ever more dependent on imported oil.
So to meet Kyoto's targets and deadline would be political suicide in a country so dependent on cars and cheap power.
"A change back to a Democratic administration resulting from the 2004 elections may bring a more positive attitude to multilateral climate strategy," said Michael Zammit Cutajar, former UNFCCC executive secretary.
But "it cannot be counted upon to produce a complete change of heart on the protocol. It will still be necessary to address the economic concerns of the United States. So one has to take a somewhat longer view of prospects."
On that score, some Kyoto supporters fervently believe in an eventual US return.
That faith is rooted in Bush's departure from the White House (next year or in 2009) and by corporate lobbying if US rivals start to make money from Kyoto's market mechanisms.
The present "commitment period" runs out in 2012, and negotiations begin next year for the cuts in the commitment period after that.
So would a Kerry administration at least wish to join those talks?
Kate Hampton, a former green activist who is now policy analyst with London merchant bank Climate Change Capital, said Kerry's best card was the growing concern among the US public about global warming.
California and northeastern US states are pushing through their own laws or initiatives on emission control and emissions trading, and a so-called "Kyoto lite" initiative launched in the Senate by John McCain and Joseph Lieberman was defeated in October 2003 by just 55 votes to 43.
"The US suffers from an administration that is not representative at all of the groundswell of public opinion on this issue," said Hampton.
"The Bush administration is a major obstacle, but it is a historical blip, to be honest. The science is undeniable and people are starting to take action."

10/22/2004 14:34 GMT - AFP