By: Mike Hosking | Friday, November 02, 2012 9:29 AM

It’s been a very upbeat week on the Kyoto front. When I talked of this on Monday I hinted of the possibility that come the second round of commitments in Doha in a couple of weeks the word was the Government wasn’t going to sign up. Now that's one thing.

A lot stuff floats about the place that may never see the light of day, no matter how much you’d like it to happen. But since then we’ve talked to both Steven Joyce and the Prime Minister about it and they have as good as told us the rumour is right - there is no signature, no new obligations, we’re done with it. They didn't say it in those words but they said it in the words they say things when they want a message to get out there so that when they make the actual announcement it doesn't come as a complete surprise. Plus in this case given it’s good news, they get a couple of cracks at headlines with it.

The only sadness is they didn't see this day one. This is not about global warming and whether the world is coming to an end because I don't know if it is and I like to deal in fact.

Here are the facts - the science is heavily disputed. Even if we are warming the place up, us trying to tax ourselves into cutting back emissions won’t save us. We don't pollute enough - never have, never will. Even if cutting emissions could save us, the polluters never signed up to the deal and never cut their emissions. And here’s another fact – they’re not going to, ever.

So all Kyoto ever was was a half-baked, idealistic, fantasy-laden attempt to look to be doing the right thing even though it wasn’t doing anything at all.

Then came the GFC. Even your climate sceptic had to agree for a while there global warming and Kyoto and saving the planet became the subject du jour over the chardonnays. But the GFC brought all that to a spectacular halt as people started to realise that jobs and feeding their kids was slightly more important than scientific concepts that cost money and may not even work anyway.

So emissions, emissions trading, Kyoto and global warming’s day had come and gone. It may be back, who knows, but for now it's a goner. As such, any government who rocks up to Doha and goes ‘yep, sign me up, give me some more of those taxes and inconveniences, we can’t wait to slap them on our poor unsuspecting populations’, well those governments are for the dust bin.

Our Government, not being born yesterday, has seen that possibility and that's why they’ve started laying the ground work for the strategic exit. All the usual suspects will hate it but all the usual suspects have never lived in the real world. Besides, the noise of their protest will be drowned out by the sign of relief from the rest of us that at last common sense has prevailed.

Photo: stock.xchng