This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Monday, January 7th, 2008. I'm Caleb Brown.

What does 2008 hold in store for the climate change debate?

Cato Institute Senior Fellow Pat Michael says the negotiations at Bali

have set up a potential agreement that does less to impact global warming

than the Ballyh Valley Hood Kyoto Protocol.

The talks at Bali were less about establishing hard targets than they were about achieving sort of a general agreement moving forward about CO2 emissions.

Where does that roadmap from Bali stand now?

Well, the road is pretty hard to see.

In fact, there were some attempts to establish hard targets and time tables at Bali, they failed. All that was really agreed upon

with regard to the future was that there will be another meeting in

in 2009 and that at that meeting there will be a new agreement to replace the

expiring and failed Kyoto Protocol on Global Warming.

Senator John Kerry made some pretty jarring comments about the realities of actually getting these

treaties or creating treaty obligations through the US Senate.

He seemed to support a lot of what was being said at Bali,

but was reminding the folks there that if they wanted something

to get through the US Senate,

it would have to be reasonable.

How likely is something reasonable being

generated from this process? Right now I think what could go through the

Senate would be very unreasonable as long as Bush's president because I would like to invite a

presidential veto so that it can become an election issue in 2008. What went through at Bali was a commitment but not a hard target and

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