PROBLEM: Eutopian greenies and reactionary technocrats get together and create a treaty purpose-built to sink the economy of any nation dumb enough to sign it. Which yours just did.

SOULTION: Cheat:

Many governments, including some that claim to be leading the fight against global warming, are harbouring a dirty little secret. These countries are emitting far more greenhouse gas than they say they are, a fact that threatens to undermine not only the shaky Kyoto protocol but also the new multibillion-dollar market in carbon trading.

Thing is, I don't trust the scientist who's "found" the cheating any more than I trust the governments reporting they're not. Environmental movements have always been far more about politics than they ever have been about science. When the left's favorite social systems were proven to be bankrupt, most of their believers simply started playing for a different team, and it's so bad now that you don't even have to rub a green leader very hard to get the red to show through.

Is global warming happening? Probably, evidence seems pretty clear to me. But every reasonable estimate I've ever seen or heard about projects its effect to happen over decades, if not centuries. Given that time frame, market forces are more than adequate to address the problem, no special treaty needed.

And don't give me anything about shifting currents or melting bergs. The planet's done that for as long as its been around, and life seems to be getting along just fine. It took us two centuries to even notice anything is changing, and it's so subtle we still argue about it.

No, global environmental apocalypse is about as likely as the worker's social apocalypse was in the previous two centuries, and the results of listening to the prophets of the former will most likely lead to the results of the latter. Namely, the only ones heading for real disaster are the ones listening to those predicting it.