BBC NEWS Science/Nature Business deal or bright idea?: "To insiders, the Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate is a real world, mature-person's solution to climate change.
No economic pain, no mandatory targets, no international commitments and no need for open, accountable negotiations.
No place for the fetid unwashed of the environmental movement; keep it in the family of power-suited industrial and political brokers, the few who can really get things done.
The electronic juice will keep flowing, the giant developing economies of Asia will keep growing, and no government will have to do anything it doesn't want to do.
To other observers, it's an empty vessel; a fig-leaf to cover the embarrassment of George Bush and John Howard, the only western leaders to have reneged on commitments their predecessors made at the UN Kyoto conference in 1997.
In this thesis, the Partnership will deliver nothing of benefit to the climate, because technology alone cannot bring the huge reductions in greenhouse gas emissions which, according to consensus climate science, are needed.
The case for the defence is mounted by Australian Industry Minister Ian Macfarlane.
'The reality is new technology will deliver three times the savings in greenhouse gas as the Kyoto Protocol will,' he said in the run-up to the meeting here.
New technologies are at the heart of the Partnership's vision
'Things like geosequestration, solar energy, better utilisation of the newer technologies are going to see more efficient electricity production and more efficient electricity consumption.'
The Australian position is that Kyoto will not deliver meaningful cuts in carbon emissions; their evidence is that many fully paid-up Kyoto nations look set to miss their targets by some margin.
Emissions "