Kyoto is the movement’s Holy Grail. The agreement, signed by over 100 nations in Japan in 1997, requires industrialized countries to implement policies reducing so-called greenhouse gas emissions. It’s a model for U.N. bureaucrats and foundation-funded activists who want to regulate energy use on a global scale. However, to be legally binding, the treaty must be signed by at least 55 nations that account for at least 55 percent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions. So far the 100 signatory nations account for only 44 percent. Because the Bush Administration rejects the treaty, that leaves Russia. With 14 percent of total greenhouse gas emissions, its endorsement is critical.

Environmentalists know Putin will protect Russia’s interests. But they thought he would seize the opportunity to sign a treaty having no real impact on his country’s economy. That’s because Russia has fewer emissions today than in 1990, the treaty’s baseline year. Unlike other industrialized countries, Russia today would be in immediate compliance with the treaty.

But Western environmental groups fail to credit Putin’s serious intention to double Russia’s economy by the year 2010. Kyoto stands in his way. Said Andrei Illarionov, Putin’s chief economic advisor: “Considering that the Kyoto Protocol is restricting economic growth, we must say it straight that it means dooming the country to poverty, backwardness, and weakness.” Putin joked at the conference that global warming “might even be good. We’d spend less money on fur coats.”

Dumbfounded environmental groups are trying to explain away Russia’s response. The World Wildlife Fund claims “Russian ratification of the Kyoto climate treaty is still bogged down in bureaucracy.” The group Environmental Defense dismisses Illarionov’s argument as a reaction to “the pressures of some economic interests.”

But what really hurts is Russian officials’ outright rejection of the global warming theory. The Moscow conference chairman stated: “All the scientific evidence seems to support the same general conclusions, that the Kyoto protocol is overly expensive, ineffective, and based on bad science.”  The head of the Russian Academy of Sciences said global warming predictions were “inaccurate … and contrary to the opinions held by most scientists.” Adding insult to injury, he observed, “The only people who would be hurt by abandoning the Kyoto protocol would be several thousand people who make a living attending conferences on global warming.”

Radical Greenpeace activists are firing back, claiming “oddballs and fossil-fuel industry funded hacks” are “an embarrassment to the proud tradition of Russian science.” But they too are reluctant to pin the blame on Putin and will only say that Russia is “stalling” and its “delay in signing the treaty is mystifying.”

Russia’s dramatic affront to the conventional wisdom of Western environmental elites has been met by silence or spin. The environmental groups won’t answer Putin’s questions or quell his fears. That speaks volumes about the logic behind the Kyoto treaty and the motives of green groups. A genuine environmental movement would debate ideas and prove its theories. But ours turns a deaf ear and pretends that other positions don’t exist. 

Amazingly, Russia’s Putin has stalled environmentalism’s victory lap.

Greg Gorham is a research assistant for www.greenwatch.org, a project of the Capital Research Center.