While it's quite evident that China has problems with smog and things like that, it is worth noting the progress the Chinese government is making in combating climate change:
'Senator THOMAS. None of you mentioned particularly what some of the things are that we’re doing now. We have a coal plant in my State that’s going to eliminate CO2. We’re going to move more toward nuclear. We’re doing quite a little bit, moving toward automobiles and so on. Do you think we’re making progress at this point?
Mr. STERN. Yes, I do. If I might return to the issue of China in that context that Senator Domenici raised: we’ve traveled a great deal since the publication of the Review, and indeed prior to publication of the Review we did visit the biggest countries around the world from this perspective—including the United States, India and China—and we went back there after the Review. We spent a lot of time in China explaining and underlining and emphasizing that the United States is taking strong action. We pointed to the examples of California. We pointed to examples of the Northeastern States. We pointed to the importance of the technology investment and research that the United States is taking, and that is a big part of our argument in China. But also when we come here to the United States we emphasize just how much China is doing. If I could give you just a few examples, it’s a very important context for the whole story. They’re building collaboration.
China is no longer deforesting. It is now reforesting. China has, as I mentioned in my testimony, a 20 percent reduction in the energy intensity target within 5 years. Their eleventh 5-year plan started last year and they’re implementing and working on that in a very strong way—for example, through direct targets for the 1,000 biggest firms in China, recently extended considerably to below our tier terms. You cannot sell an American car in China because it doesn’t meet the emissions standards, which are pretty high. Beijing has made $8,000 tax on SUVs. China in late November, early December instituted an export tax on energy-intensive goods, such as aluminum, steel and cement. So China is grappling with this problem. There’s a tremendous amount more that many of us believe it should be doing but I think it’s not correct to say that China is doing nothing, and we try to explain through the examples I’ve just given how China is beginning to get its arms around this problem. Just as when we are in China, we emphasize very strongly what the United States is doing.'
Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources: Hearings – 110th Congress. S. Hrg 110-52 -- Economics of Climate Change, February 13, 2007. Page 44.
http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi?dbname=110_senate_hearings&docid=f:35906.pdf
Alamar's description of the Kyoto Protocol being 'a waste of time' is, in my view, rather unfair. I've found this article by Cameron Hepburn on the Kyoto Protocol quite helpful. He argues that the carbon trading system used in the EU Emissions Trading Scheme (one of the Kyoto Protocol's Flexibility Mechanisms) may provide a basis for future climate policy:
'Climate change is a market failure without parallel, on the “greatest scale the world has seen” (1), so it is not surprising that the ETS created to address it should eventually be seen as representing the world's greatest ever privatization of a natural asset. Despite this, current carbon markets represent a very small and highly imperfect step. Indeed, one of the most pressing challenges in climate policy over the next decade, once the manifest and serious flaws in the current system are corrected, is to increase the scope of emissions trading to cover more countries, more sectors, and over longer time periods. Ultimately, caps must be tightened to improve environmental effectiveness, and allowances must auctioned to address serious inefficiencies in allocation and important issues of fairness.
Other climate policies are, of course, available and well understood, including regulation, carbon taxes, and information provision. These approaches will continue to play an important role. But extraordinary human, social, and negotiating capital has been invested in the institutions of the flexible mechanisms under the Kyoto Protocol. Although the flexible mechanisms currently have some serious problems, they nevertheless provide a very important basis on which to construct a more sensible and effective global climate policy.'
Hepburn, C. (2007) 'Carbon trading: a review of the Kyoto mechanisms', Annual Review of Environment and Resources, Vol 32, 375-393.
http://arjournals.annualreviews.org/eprint/V5uDHeDwvfmeMnr3IuPZ/full/10.1146/annurev.energy.32.053006.141203