But hopes for an agreement collapsed over the weekend and the meeting ended without a deal. According to press reports, there were two major bones of contention. First was the issue of countries earning reduction credits for forested land (known as carbon "sinks" since they soak up carbon dioxide, the leading greenhouse gas). Heavily forested countries such as the U.S. and Canada lobbied aggressively for such provisions while the Europeans opposed them, offering only limited credits for sinks.

The second issue was the establishment of a system to trade cash credits for emissions. This would effectively allow polluting countries to purchase their way into compliance with treaty requirements through deals with nations whose emissions fell well below the mandated limits. Again, the U.S. was the key backer of creating this kind of trading system.

American negotiators have always stressed the need for a pragmatic agreement, a treaty that a skeptical Congress might reasonably ratify and that also includes incentives for industry -- in other words, a treaty with an eye on economic and political as well as environmental concerns. But critics blast the U.S., by far the world's biggest polluter, for trying to buy and bully its way out of having to make a serious effort to reduce emissions.

Salon asked two experts with very different points of view -- an environmental lawyer and a power industry executive -- to take a look at the recent summit and predict what will happen next.

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David Hunter is executive director of the Center for International Environmental Law, a public interest environmental law firm based in Washington and in Switzerland. CIEL conducts research on issues such as the role of international financial institutions in furthering environmental policies, provides education and training in environmental law and issues position papers and other publications on global environmental concerns. Hunter did not attend the summit in the Hague.

Do you think there would have been much benefit to an agreement given Congress' likely resistance to it?

I do. First, I think Congress' resistance is somewhat overstated. The recent elections have improved the moderates' hand, particularly in the Senate, which is where ratification takes place. As one example of that, Sen. McCain held very serious hearings on climate change after he'd gone around the country campaigning for president.

I think we would see that McCain and others in the Republican Party would take a more moderate position toward Kyoto. There's still going to be huge opposition from Jesse Helms and (Robert) Byrd. I wouldn't say that we definitely would have gotten ratification, but I think it would have been a very serious and very closely fought battle if we'd gotten a decent agreement out of The Hague.

Do you think the dangers of the collapse of the talks have also been overstated? Did anything positive come out of this?

The collapse is a bummer. But the reason why it collapsed was because the U.S. and certain European countries couldn't come to an agreement over what measures would have to be taken.

A lot depends on what happens now. The problem's still going to get worse. The science is still going to drive us to have to have international cooperation. So we may come back and ultimately have a stronger agreement. Given that we may have a Bush presidency, it's hard to believe that we will in the near term have a stronger agreement, but the problem's not going away.

Do you think there might have been a different outcome at this summit if the presidential election had been resolved before the meeting started?

I don't know how the dynamics work out there [in The Hague]. But given that most people have thought Bush has the inside track, if the election were going to have an impact it would seem to me to be the fear that if they don't take this agreement now, they're not going to get anything for the next four years. On the other hand, some people might have said, "Look, we can make this agreement here and it isn't going to mean anything because the next administration isn't committed to it." That may have ultimately been why people said, "Let's wait and try to renegotiate this soon."

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