From the WSJ’s Morning Brief:

In his first official act as a new prime minister, Kevin Rudd today signed paperwork that will lead to Australia’s ratification of the Kyoto Protocol, further isolating the U.S. on climate issues just as negotiators are meeting in Bali to start work on Kyoto’s successor.

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Under Kyoto, industrialized countries that ratified the treaty were charged with lowering their emissions by 5% from 1990s levels — requirements that expire in 2012 — but in many big industrialized countries emissions have continued to increase. That’s part of why regimes were created to allow countries to trade carbon credits, buying, for example, Eastern European’s permission to pollute in order to emit more in Western Europe. It was a way, as The Wall Street Journal says, of harnessing market forces to deal with global warming. But the trading “hasn’t yet ignited the green-energy revolution its architects were expecting,” the Journal says. “The cap-and-trade system has brought about useful projects targeting a few especially potent greenhouse gases. It hasn’t, however, forced the industrialized world to meaningfully curb what scientists say is the biggest problem of all — the growing consumption of fossil fuels.”

The Bali talks are aimed at going a lot farther, looking at proposals from the attending governments — like Britain’s idea of limiting global aviation and shipping emissions, as the Guardian reports — and working off the IPCC recommendations. But as the New York Times notes, few participants expect the current talks to produce a breakthrough.