Andrew Bolt thinks Kevin Rudd is throwing money away for no good reason:

Kevin Rudd is determined to ratify the Kyoto Protocol despite knowing it will probably cost us billions

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In fact, by ratifying Kyoto, Rudd will instantly commit us to paying a $1.6 billion fine in carbon credits (correction: $160 million. See Update 3 below) unless we manage to get back under our target. That’s based on the European price last week of $26.85 for carbon credits for each tonne of CO2.

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So why is Rudd signing away our cash?

Of course, Bolt believes global warming is not occurring, so he can see no reason at all to risk any fines or to attempt to reduce greenhouse emissions. Which means that he continues to question why Rudd has ratified Kyoto, despite the fact that he gave the answer himself:

In fact, by ratifying Kyoto, Rudd will instantly commit us to paying a $1.6 billion fine in carbon credits (correction: $160 million. See Update 3 below) unless we manage to get back under our target.

If you start from an assumption that global warming is not happening, then what Rudd has done is the equivalent of putting a few thousand dollars on a horse at 200-to-1 - but without the possibility of winning back hundreds of thousands of dollars.

But if you start from the position that the preponderance of scientific evidence supports the notion that global warming is occurring and that a proximate cause is the production of greenhouse gases by human activities, then things look a bit different. Rudd is tying our financial well-being to our effectiveness in contributing to the well-being of the environment. He is moving toward ensuring that Australia, including its householders and its corporations, have a vested interest in reducing our impact on the world. And he is making up for lost time.