The private sector needs to be involved in the quest for an AIDS vaccine

In London last week, Andrei Illarionov, economic advisor to Russian President Vladimir Putin, declared that the Kyoto Protocol is based on poor science, won't achieve its goals and will harm economic growth. Global warming is as much an opportunity as a threat, and the billions being squandered on cutting CO2 emissions would be better spent exploiting that opportunity.

Barun Mitra, co-author of Climate change and sustainable development (released 29 November 2004), writes "Not surprisingly, Kyoto does not sound convincing to the world's poor. For what this present debate over climate change has done is to divert attention from the core issue of mankind ó poverty." Mitra discusses a salient economic lesson from history ó "increased consumption stimulates efforts at improving efficiency, which in turn contributes to conservation, economic and environmental... The Kyoto protocol seeks to reverse this relationship by focusing on reducing consumption through punitive taxes and so on, which will not ultimately help conservation goals."