Source: www.kyotoclub.org/ita/01.php

For the last 30 years we’ve seen nothing like last year which saw a record number of deaths due to natural disasters: about 300 thousand people died from tsunami, floods, hurricanes, tropical storms and earthquakes for a total of 116 calamities in 2004.

The countries that are hardest hit are those that lose the most because they have no means of being reimbursed by insurance companies: 96% of the victims of the catastrophes live in Asia, but Asia will receive only a quarter of the money paid out by the insurance companies for natural disasters. North America will receive 68% of the money even though it had only 2% of the victims.

So it’s all obvious. Why should great poisoners like the United States of America, Japan and China sign up to the Kyoto agreement? Economic growth at home and catastrophe victims elsewhere. If it were to happen at home anyway there’s insurance. 128 countries signed up to the agreement for the reduction of greenhouse gases and yet they represent only 55% of the emissions.

Italy? We signed up. From February of this year the Treaty is active, but rather than thinking about how to reduce our emissions we are already getting ready to pay for clean air quotas from other European countries so that we can achieve our objective to have –6.5 % of emissions by 2012.

This will cost us between 0.5 and 5 thousand million Euro (500,000,000 - 5,000,000,000 Euro) so that we are OK on paper but breathing unbreathable air in real life.