It took almost a decade to ratify the pact that tries something to mitigate the biggest environmental issue of our time. Now, time is at hand. The real fight begins in less than a day.

While the treaty will come into force tomorrow, the facilities for emission trading have been set up. One of them is the Chicago Climate Exchange, the CCX. It is the world’s first greenhouse gases exchange. The existence of this exchange will allow companies to buy and sell quotas set forth by the Kyoto Protocol. The market looks thin to me for the moment but I’m sure as time goes by, it will thicken. In Europe, agreements between firms and countries on quota transfer have already been signed upon. I’m unable to provide a link or two on this as the news came out some weeks ago. Wikipedia, the Oracle of the Internet, however does provide some example.

While the implementation of the Protocol takes place, some already fail to prepare themselves for oncoming treaty. The European Union, possibly the green's current best of friends, has sued a few of its members for such failure.

The target of the Protocol is anything but easy and that is why some have failed to comply despite ratification. The pact asserts that by the year 2012, the worldwide level of six greenhouse gases needs to be comparable to 1990 level. I simply believe it is almost impossible to reach that goal. The time frame is simply too short for such grand achievement – economy will grow somehow and so will the emission of the gases.

Yet, this constraint imposed by Kyoto may overcome that skepticism. It has been said that the mother of all inventions is necessity (I say laziness is the father of invention). With the expensive protocol in place, there will come a time to find a cheaper way to implement Kyoto. My take on the solution is technology; in particular, energy efficiency. A breakthrough such as the mass production of fuel cell is highly needed for the 1990 target to be possible.

And of course, future participation by China and India is important. The US and Australia on the other hand are possibly lost in their own reality. Concerning the US, a few states, notably of New England and the Pacific, have taken their own initiative to reduce carbon emission despite the diverging stance by the federal government.

Whatever it is, an ode to Kyoto and the Earth Summit at Rio de Janeiro, the place where it all begun. Kyoto might be imperfect but it is bringing us into the right direction, however short that step really is.