08 Oct 2004 Putin, the EU and Kyoto: A Double-Cross in the Making?

National Center Senior Fellow Bonner Cohen is attempting to decipher Vladimir’s Putin’s strategy on Kyoto. He’s just written a piece for newspapers nationwide. The Ft. Wayne News-Sentinel is the first paper to publish it.

Money quote:

The wily former spymaster may well be setting Kyoto’s proponents up for one of history’s grandest double-crosses by signing the treaty and grabbing the billions of dollars in promised payoffs with no intention of ever living up to its terms.

After all, the only way for the European Union or the United Nations to really determine if Russia is complying with Kyoto is to site thousands of monitors on the ground in a vast territory that spans six time zones – or to rely on Russian self-certification.

The first option is not likely to be granted by the xenophobic Russians, while the statistics generated by the second are likely to be doctored beyond all credibility.