P olicy analysts and diplomats worldwide are now focused on the design of the regime that could replace or extend the Kyoto Protocol in 2012 when the Protocol's main commitments expire. While the Kyoto Protocol has several achievements to its credit – in particular, it has played a role in sustaining political attention on the need for policies to control emissions of the gases that cause global warming – in many respects the Protocol is in deep trouble. In Australia, Canada, and the United States – three countries where the Kyoto commitments would have been most demanding – governments have largely abandoned the treaty. In Japan and Europe governments are implementing some limits on emissions, but much effort is now focused on a shell game of accounting that will probably yield formal legal compliance with the treaty's strictures through the trading of credits that do not reflect actual reductions in emissions. The Russian government nearly abandoned the treaty for fear that it would actually require changes in behavior. The integrated international market for emissions envisioned under the Protocol has not yet materialized; instead, at least six different carbon markets have emerged – each with their own rules and prices. The Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), a scheme intended to engage developing countries by subsidizing projects that would allow them to build less-carbon-intensive energy systems, is tied in red tape that will be familiar to any student of the US Environmental Protection Agency's limited emission trading programs – notably the offsets program – of the 1970s (Hahn and Hester 1989).
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