Climate change stories have been making headlines. In these pre-election times demonising the Kyoto Protocol has again become political sport for some. The public can easily become misinformed. Let's get the story straight.

The Kyoto Protocol is not about carbon taxes and forest credits. The protocol signed in 1997 is an international agreement to begin to manage the greenhouse gas emissions that are causing global climate change.

For each industrialised country it provided an emissions target and flexible means for meeting it. It allowed more than a decade before its provisions took effect and 15 years before compliance was assessed.

One provision provides credits for the carbon dioxide that new (since 1990) forests remove from the atmosphere. Countries can also trade emission units and credits, creating an international "carbon market".

Carbon taxes and managing forest credits are part of the domestic policies New Zealand has implemented to meet its commitments. Some groups don't like these policies, blame the Kyoto Protocol and call for New Zealand to withdraw from it as if it were the problem. Wrong problem, wrong solution.

The fact that China and India don't have targets is not a flaw of Kyoto

In 1995, at the beginning of negotiations, all countries agreed that developing countries would not have to increase their commitments in this "next step" of the United Nations Climate Convention.

Industrialised countries were to go first. Their historical emissions are mostly responsible for the looming threat of climate change, in particular the burning of fossil fuels that was central to their industrialisation.

Disparities in per-capita CO2 emissions from energy, a key indicator of development status, were also considered. In 2000 they were 1 tonne per person in India, 2.8 tonnes per person in China, 8.5 in New Zealand, 9.5 in Britain, 9.7 in Japan, 17.3 in Australia, and 20.1 in the United States.

However, all 28 industrialised OECD countries that ratified Kyoto did so in the expectation that the next step must better engage the large developing countries. Notably, the upcoming meetings of the G8, which have climate change high on the agenda, also include China, India, Mexico, Brazil and South Africa.

Ratifying Kyoto is not about making money and never was

Instead of being the "and by the way" point at the end of the list of reasons when New Zealand ratified Kyoto, the "making money" rationale tended to grab the headlines as different groups sparred politically.

It is naive to believe addressing a problem that many world leaders have described as this century's greatest global threat necessarily must be costless, while at the same time ignoring the benefits of taking action. To say New Zealand should have ratified Kyoto only if there was no cost is vacuous.