Rio Tinto's British Division Says Yes to Carbon Credits Thereby Acquiescing to the UK signing on to the Kyoto Protocol. (July 30 2004)

According to Annabel Day in today's Australian Financial Review, "In the June issue of the company's in-house magazine, Review, Rio's London climate change executive, Alan Steinbeck, is quoted as saying the company has "to be ready to enter carbon-market mechanisms". And Day reports that she was told by the company's Australian general manager of external affairs, Ian Head, that Rio Tinto doesn't hold a view on the matter of national ratification of the Kyoto Protocol.

In itself that's an interesting statement because it indicates that Rio Tinto's three-day-a-week Chief Technologist and the Commonwealth's two-day-a-week Chief Scientist, Robin Batterham, is at odds with Rio Tinto's stated non-position.

Dr. Batterham on July 2 told a Senate committee examining the Office of the Chief Scientist:

Senator Brown -- But surely you would not be opposed to Australia ratifying the Kyoto protocol?
 

Dr Batterham -- I do have some inherent opposition to signing the thing, and I am in a difficult position on it. My difficulty is one of principle that says that, if you put a target in front of people that you want to encourage them by and we use the elastic band analogy and if you put a target which is so far out that the stretch in the rubber band means that it breaks or that the view is one that is so far out that nobody signs onto it, you have failed. Conversely, if you put a target in front of people, when the real game is over there, which is only a small step away, then it tends to be too blasé. It tends to have such little impact that, again, you fail to move people in the direction that we have really got to go. So I do have a quandary on Kyoto.

 It's not public knowledge as to whether or not Dr. Batterham has voiced his concerns to Rio Tinto management or how they may have reacted to his reasoning.