ABSTRACT
As the dust settled on Kyoto, reaction to the commitments adopted spanned the full panoply. Some environmentalists declared that the commitments were so inadequate as to be a sham, rendering the whole Protocol irrelevant to the real task of safeguarding the planet. At the opposite extreme, some industrialists and energy economists compared the headline emission reduction commitments against emission projections and declared that the commitments simply could not be met, or at least that the attempt to meet them would impose immense and unacceptable economic burdens. This chapter sets out the environmental and economic implications of the Kyoto commitments.
