This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Friday, December 14, 2007. I'm Caleb Brown. Governments from around the world have sent

representatives to Bali to plot a roadmap for a cutting global carbon dioxide

emissions and replace the Kyoto Protocol. The details of that roadmap have yet to come into focus.

Ronald Bailey, science correspondent for Reason magazine

and an adjunct scholar at the Kido Institute,

is in Bali and spoke with me about the proceedings there.

The UN Secretary General suggests that the United States has essentially succeeded in removing specific

guidelines for reduction of emissions from the drafts associated with

this round of talks could you comment on that?

Well that's been a long-term goal of the United States at these negotiations.

What they're afraid of is that if you put in specific numbers, in this particular case,

they're thinking the numbers are 25 to 40% reduction below what the industrialized countries

emitted in greenhouse gases in 1990 they would cut back to by that amount

below they cut that by that amount by that amount by 2020, the United States is afraid they would

freeze it into the next two years of negotiations that are scheduled to end in Copenhagen

in 2009.

And basically, the delegation came here with the notion,

well, we don't want to prejudge whatever

before we come to Copenhagen.

What we're going to do is negotiate those levels. before we come to Copenhagen.

What we're going to do is negotiate those levels.

We're not going to decide that those levels are what we're going for.

...