Kyoto: The Battle that Defined Climate Politics - with Joe Robertson

Summary

Podcast Summary:

Cautionary Tales with Tim Harford
Episode: Kyoto: The Battle that Defined Climate Politics – with Joe Robertson
Date: November 21, 2025
Host: Tim Harford
Guest: Joe Robertson (co-writer of the play "Kyoto")

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Overview: Main Theme and Purpose

This episode explores the dramatic true story behind the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, the world's first legally binding climate agreement. Through an engaging conversation with playwright Joe Robertson, Tim Harford investigates the high-stakes negotiation, the swirling chaos and politics, and the pivotal figures—heroes and antiheroes—who shaped the course of global climate policy. Robertson dissects how the international community struggled and occasionally succeeded in finding consensus on an existential threat, as depicted in his acclaimed play "Kyoto".

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Why Kyoto? The Theatrical Allure of Climate Negotiations

[06:20–07:54]

• Joe Robertson and his co-writer were fascinated by polarization and divided discourse in society. They wanted to tell a story about agreement—even in contentious circumstances.
  • "We wanted to write about [polarization] and find a way of talking about that in a dramatic and exciting way and actually stumbled on the story of Kyoto by accident, and were immediately inspired by this parable of agreement." – Joe Robertson [06:33]
• Robertson was inspired by the high-stakes emotion, pride, and drama relayed by real participants of Kyoto: "The intrigue, the back corridor deals, but above all, a real dedication and devotion and pride in what they do." – [07:24]

2. Setting the Stage: Climate Politics in the Late 20th Century

[07:54–09:21]

• The climate conversation gained momentum in the 1980s, culminating in the creation of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 1988.
• Early climate science was full of uncertainties, making consensus difficult: "Distilling that evidence into a clear thing that […] everyone can understand is sort of one of the major problems at the heart of this discussion." – Joe Robertson [08:54]

3. The Choice of Protagonist: Don Perlman, an Oil Lobbyist

[10:01–11:39]

• Rather than a climate hero, the play centers on Don Perlman – an obscure but pivotal oil lobbyist, representing the “agent of disagreement" within a story about forging agreement.
  • "The idea of writing a story of agreement told through the lens of this agent of disagreement at the heart of it felt like quite an exciting dramatic device that could undermine some of that earnestness…" – Joe Robertson [10:59]
• Perlman, despite being little-known, was “a thorn in the side of those trying to find a way to move the world forward.”

4. The Tactics of Delay and Uncertainty

[12:26–13:37]

• Echoing strategies pioneered by the tobacco industry, Perlman exploited uncertainty to stall progress:
  • "He and his associates didn’t need to present a sort of a coherent idea of the science […] it just needed to be a question mark. And that was enough to sow doubt in a subject as dense and as opaque as climate…" – Joe Robertson [12:26]
• People, individually and collectively, often seized on any reason to delay difficult, costly changes: "So very often people are just desperate to find a reason to delay, not even necessarily to do nothing, but to do nothing yet." – Tim Harford [13:03]

5. Negotiating the Impossible: Multiple Voices, Diverse Interests

[13:37–19:14]

• Achieving global agreement is vastly more complicated than getting a group to agree on dinner; representing billions, nations struggle to reconcile economic and existential interests.
• Small island nations (bloc: Alliance of Small Island States, AOSIS) emerged as a “moral compass,” making climate a present, not future, threat for many:
  • "They become much more difficult to ignore and they become the moral compass of the negotiations." – Joe Robertson [18:53]

Notable Dramatic Quote (Small Island States Rise Up)

• "We will not drown in silence." – Actor/Narrator (from play) [20:10]

6. Science Under Fire: The Santer “Discernible” Moment

[20:38–23:33]

• In 1995, Ben Santer’s “discernible human influence” phrase in the IPCC report became a crucible, spurring personal attacks and one of the first major “doxings” in the climate debate.
• "They accused Ben of changing details [...] It kind of destroys Ben's life. [...] It's one of the first doxings we can actually find in the history of the Internet." – Joe Robertson [22:00]

7. Perlman’s Toolbox: Double Diplomacy and Exploiting Procedure

[24:10–26:15]

• Perlman’s tactics included “double diplomacy” (playing nations against each other), exploiting procedural ambiguity (e.g., the bracketing of Rule 22 around majority requirements), and constant immersion in negotiations.
• His maneuvering entrenched a consensus model—requiring unanimity—that endures in climate talks today:
  • "That rule still applies to this day… operating under a consensus model of agreement that began, you know, as a result of Don and the OPEC states back in 1995." – Joe Robertson [26:10]

8. Unexpected Hero: John Prescott, the Reluctant Lead Negotiator

[26:41–28:22]

• UK Deputy PM John Prescott was integral, with negotiation skills honed as a union mediator. When the Dutch failed to show, Prescott unexpectedly led the EU bloc at Kyoto.
• "He connects with voters with his fist, as it were… but he was absolutely integral to the success of Kyoto." – Joe Robertson [26:41]
• Prescott's motto: "Just keep walking and talking." – [27:39]

9. The Core Deadlock: Old Polluters vs. New Aspirants

[28:22–29:53]

• The US and China clashed: who should bear responsibility for emissions? Established polluters (US/EU) vs. rising powers (China, India), with developing states insisting: "You have caused this problem. It must be yours to solve…"
• "How you square that circle is the fundamental problem of solving climate change." – Joe Robertson [29:39]

10. The Final Night: Chaos, Commas, and Compromise

[34:14–38:01]

• The last session was a farcical but epic all-nighter: chairman Estrada disappeared (for a nap), interpreters left, negotiators argued over every word and comma.
  • "Coffee is run out, food has run out. There’s rumors that toilet roll is running out as well. The conference staff are clearing away furniture because they’ve got an event the next morning." – Joe Robertson [34:28]
• Commas became tools for ambiguity: "A comma allows for a slight ambiguity in a sentence that allows two different delegations to go home and claim victory." – Joe Robertson [36:29]
• Estrada hammered clauses through by sheer force of will: agreement achieved "by unanimity".
  • "By the end, he’s gaveling through and you can hear the delegates going, agreed, agreed. And it sort of rises into this crescendo…" – Joe Robertson [37:28]

11. Aftermath and Legacy of Kyoto

[38:01–41:43]

• Despite US non-ratification, Kyoto marked a critical line in the sand; many ratifying nations met or exceeded targets.
  • "No one can say things are going well in climate. I think without Kyoto, we’d be in a much worse position." – Joe Robertson [38:30]
• Kyoto helped legitimize climate policy and made climate an inescapable part of global politics.

12. Reflections on Cynicism, Idealism, and Human Nature

[40:27–43:47]

• Some changes are due to technological progress and national policies, but Kyoto shifted global consciousness.

  • "We live in an after Kyoto world where the threads run through all elements of policy making all around the world…" – Joe Robertson [40:46]

• On Perlman: Robertson believes he never doubted his own rightness, seeing climate policy as a threat to America's interests.

• The problem is deeper than science; it's entwined with politics, economics, and identity:

  • "Fossil fuels and our use of the natural resources of this planet are a part of every single aspect of our life…" – Joe Robertson [43:21]

13. Lessons for Today: Keep Walking and Talking

[44:15–44:52]

• The utility of dialogue and perseverance—Robertson’s advice for modern negotiators:
  • "Just keep walking and talking. […] all we have is discussion, is conversation, is the ability to talk and to work through our problems…" – Joe Robertson [44:49]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• "How do you get that many people to agree on anything, let alone something as difficult and contentious as laws and climate laws, which have tentacles in every part of our society?" – Joe Robertson [06:57]
• "It just needed to be a question mark. And that was enough to sow doubt in a subject as dense and as opaque as climate…" – Joe Robertson [12:26]
• "We will not drown in silence." – Play (Actor/Narrator) representing small island states [20:10]
• "A comma allows for a slight ambiguity in a sentence that allows two different delegations to go home and claim victory." – Joe Robertson [36:29]
• "No one can say things are going well in climate. I think without Kyoto, we’d be in a much worse position…" – Joe Robertson [38:30]
• "We live in an after Kyoto world…" – Joe Robertson [40:46]
• "Just keep walking and talking." – John Prescott’s maxim, invoked by Joe Robertson [44:19]

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Setting the Scene: The Kyoto Conference: [02:18–03:56]
• Origins of Climate Science & Summary of the '90s: [07:54–09:21]
• Don Perlman, Agent of Disagreement: [10:01–11:39]
• Uncertainty as a Tactic & Parallels with Tobacco: [12:26–13:37]
• Rising Voice of Small Islands: [18:00–20:13]
• Santer’s 'Discernible' Moment and Personal Fallout: [20:38–23:33]
• Perlman’s Procedural Exploitation: [24:10–26:15]
• John Prescott: The Negotiator: [26:41–28:22]
• Developed vs. Developing World Deadlock: [28:22–29:53]
• The All-Nighter and the Final Gavel: [34:14–38:01]
• Was Kyoto Worth It?: [38:01–41:43]
• Reflections and Lessons for COP30 and Beyond: [44:15–44:52]

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Conclusion:

This episode offers a vivid, human-centered account of the drama behind the Kyoto Protocol, expertly blending political history, personal stories, and philosophical questions about collective action. Through playwright Joe Robertson’s insights and Tim Harford’s probing questions, listeners see how the messiness of international negotiation can still yield moments of hope and progress—even when riddled with commas, caveats, and late-night brinkmanship.

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Essential Lesson:
When the problem is this complex, the process must be persistent. “Just keep walking and talking.”

Transcript

[Joe Robertson]

This is an iHeart podcast.

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[Tim Harford]

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[Interviewer / Host (Tim Harford)]

Pushkin. They're exhausted. Many haven't slept properly for days.

[Tim Harford]

But the fraught talks go round and round.

[Interviewer / Host (Tim Harford)]

30 people have been hospitalised from overwork. The interpreters are about to leave. World leaders are making each other cry. Others are threatening to walk out. Welcome to the Kyoto International conference center. It's December 1997. For 10 long days, representatives from 158 nations have been in the ancient Japanese city trying to strike the world's first legally binding climate agreement.

[Tim Harford]

This is the third Conference of the Parties, or COP3.

[Interviewer / Host (Tim Harford)]

An alliance of small islands makes the case for swift action in the face of rising sea levels. Oil producing countries demand compensation for potential loss of income. Developed nations express concern about the economic impact of moving away from fossil fuels, while delegates from developing countries argue they.

[Tim Harford]

Shouldn'T be held responsible for the mess.

[Interviewer / Host (Tim Harford)]

Made by the industrialised West. There are breakout sessions, huddles in corridors, walkouts, squabbles about wording and punctuation, and ultimately stasis. Now it's 3pm on the final day of the conference.

[Tim Harford]

Delegates are dropping like flies.

[Interviewer / Host (Tim Harford)]

Raul Estrada Oyhuela, the Argentinian diplomat chairing COP3 has disappeared and no targets have been agreed. Don Hurlman, lobbyist for the oil companies, rubs his hands with glee. I'm Tim Harford and you're listening to Cautionary Tales. Right now, delegates from around the world are meeting in belem, Brazil, for COP30.

[Tim Harford]

There they'll seek to reinforce global cooperation and seek to speed up the implementation.

[Interviewer / Host (Tim Harford)]

Of existing UN climate agreements and commitments. But audiences in New York are being.

[Tim Harford]

Invited to go back in time.

[Don Perlman (Character)]

I think we can all agree on one thing. The times you live in are truly awful. There's food shortages, runaway inflation, culture wars, real wars, race riots, fake news, insane insurrections, global pandemics, and on top of all of that, the planet in literal meltdown. And if you're a guy like me looking at a time like now, the main thing you think is, wow, man, the 1990s were frickin glorious.

[Tim Harford]

That was Don Perlman as played by.

[Interviewer / Host (Tim Harford)]

Stephen Kunkan in the play Kyoto, about.

[Tim Harford]

The historic third cop after sellout runs.

[Interviewer / Host (Tim Harford)]

In Stratford upon Avon and London.

[Tim Harford]

The Royal Shakespeare Company's production is currently.

[Interviewer / Host (Tim Harford)]

On stage at the Lincoln center in New York.

[Tim Harford]

Kyoto was written by Joe Robertson and.

[Interviewer / Host (Tim Harford)]

Joe Murphy, and I am delighted to say that Joe Robertson is with me now. Joe, welcome to Cautionary Tales.

[Joe Robertson]

Thank you so much, Tim. It's an absolute pleasure. Huge fan of the podcast and of all your work, so thanks for having us.

[Interviewer / Host (Tim Harford)]

Oh, it's a pleasure. It's terrific to have you on the show.

[Tim Harford]

So the inner machinations of an international climate conference.

[Interviewer / Host (Tim Harford)]

They don't scream theatrical thriller, but that is what you've created. So how did you come across this story and what convinced you of the dramatic potential?

[Joe Robertson]

We had an interest in polarization. This was a good few years ago now. And looking around at a sort of coarsening public discourse and an ever more divided society where conversation felt more strained and more difficult to have. And we wanted to write about that and find a way of talking about that in a dramatic and exciting way and actually stumbled on the story of Kyoto by accident, and were immediately inspired by this parable of agreement. And it felt to us like that spoke quite amazingly to this very divided world that we live in. You know, how do you get that many people to agree on anything, let alone something as difficult and contentious as laws and climate laws, which have tentacles in every part of our society? Now, at that point, we didn't know it would make an exciting play, but we started talking to people who were involved. Diplomats and delegates and ministers and scientists from many countries and from all across the divide. And in every one of those conversations, we're struck by the drama and the emotion and the jeopardy of these negotiations that often go on till early in the morning. The intrigue, the back corridor deals, but above all, a real dedication and devotion and pride in what they do. And that then inspired us to go. If we can translate that and put it on a stage, that might be a really great thing to do as writers.

[Interviewer / Host (Tim Harford)]

The conference is 1997, end of 1997, but the play begins a little earlier than that. So the end of the Reagan administration conversations happening around 1990 just paint us a picture of the climate conversation in the early 1990s.

[Joe Robertson]

During the 1980s, it had started to really gather pace. There was a big summit in Villiers in the Austrian Alps, with leading scientists coming together in the late 80s with great concerns about what the climate models and the meteorological models were showing about a warming world. And there was a, you know, a great deal of suspicion that man made emissions were influencing those trends that they were seeing. And out of that group then was formed in 1988, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which is a UN body that was tasked with bringing together all the available science at that time and producing a sort of report that they could then share with governments and ministers all around the world, you know, with their summary of the best available evidence and their advice about, you know, how much of a problem this really was to worry about. Although there was strong evidence, there wasn't a smoking, there was a lot of work going on to try and understand it, you know, with nascent computer models to try and. To try and figure out, yeah, climate's complicated, you know, even today there are trillions and trillions of inputs. It's a vast, vast system. So, you know, distilling that evidence into a clear thing that not only they can understand, but that everyone can understand is sort of one of the major problems at the heart of this discussion.

[Interviewer / Host (Tim Harford)]

I think you've told a cautionary tale, really. And what we do on cautionary Tales is we. We try to find some vivid character at the heart of the story that will help us bring it out of the realms of the abstract and to really introduce a figure that can help our listeners understand the story and they can follow the decisions of this person. The person you chose, I think is quite interesting. You chose a man called Don Perlman, who's a real person, but he wasn't an environmentalist, he wasn't a politician, he was a lobbyist for the oil industry. So why choose him as the person through whose eyes you're viewing much of the story?

[Joe Robertson]

You know, as we were researching and we spoke to scores of people, read every book and sort of report that we could find, learnt the language and the lingo of climate and of the un It's a lot of acronyms. And we kept discovering this name, Don Perlman, often in footnotes, often as sort of vague references. There's not much about him online or in the literature. And the more we spoke to people, the more we understood that he was an American oil lobbyist. He'd worked in the Reagan administration and the Department of Energy under Don Hodel as a sort of chief of staff, and after George H.W. bush's election, went into the private sector and started representing a wide array, although basically unknown, group of oil companies and oil producing states. And he was an absolutely brilliant strategist, a brilliant lawyer, a brilliant mind, because we wanted to write a story about agreement and a story about climate, which is often. It can be earnest and it can be serious and it can be, you know, lofty. The idea of writing a story of agreement told through the lens of this agent of disagreement at the heart of it felt like quite an exciting dramatic device that could undermine some of that earnestness, but also show what he and other lobbyists like him back then, but also to this day, how they operate within the multilateral systems which decide everything from climate to trade to, you know, you name it, how they operate within those systems to obfuscate and stall and direct the outcome of those negotiations. And there are not many people as effective as Don Perlman at doing that. He really was a thorn in the side of those trying to find a way to move the world forward.

[Interviewer / Host (Tim Harford)]

At that time, you can't look away from him on stage. It's a fantastic performance. I come at this from a slightly different angle, which is for my book. The data detective became very interested in misinformation and disinformation and the fact that some of these tactics were first used by the tobacco industry, who I mean, it's not quite the same problem, but it's a similar problem which is like there's an emerging scientific consensus that your products are killing your customers, although, you know, emerging. What is the science? What is the consensus? All of this sort of stuff. And I was quite struck by the fact that John Perlman in the play, his wife in her closing monologue, says that he thrives on uncertainty.

[Joe Robertson]

I mean, you know, you spoke about punctuation earlier. It's all about the question mark. You know, he and his associates didn't need to present a sort of a coherent idea of the science that conflicted with the ones that the UN scientists and scientists around the world were trying to formulate. It just needed to be a question mark. And that was enough to sow doubt in a subject as dense and as opaque as climate, where it's hard enough to, you know, for climate scientists to understand what's going on. It's very easy to sow that doubt and sow that discord. Uncertainty is very fertile soil for someone as smart and as brilliant as Don Perlman to operate in.

[Interviewer / Host (Tim Harford)]

Yeah, the people who are hearing the message, smoking will give you cancer, smoking will give you heart disease, all these fossil fuels, they're warming the planet. That will lead to extreme weather. You listen to that and you think to yourself, do I have to believe that, or is there some room for doubt? And who wants to believe it? Who wants to believe the cigarettes are killing them? Who wants to believe that they can't fly on holiday or drive their car anymore? You don't want to believe that. So very often people are just desperate to find a reason to delay, not even necessarily to do nothing, but to do nothing yet.

[Joe Robertson]

Absolutely. And that applies in our personal lives, in terms of our behavior, but also on a global, multilateral level. I was talking to Tim Latimer, who's a US climate negotiator, who came to see this show the other day and now teaches negotiation. And he was saying, imagine getting 170 people in a room and asking them to agree on where to go for dinner, with all their dietary requirements and their intolerances, analogies and preferences and cuisines, how impossible it would be to choose a restaurant now times that by a million, when each person is representing millions, potentially hundreds of millions of people, and these vast, complicated, interconnected economies and societies, which are hard to change at the best of times, then what you're facing is this impossible task bringing about agreement. And so you throw someone like Don Perlman or these other lobbyists into those scenarios, it becomes very easy in a way for those negotiations to be derailed because of the impossibility of the outcome that is desired.

[Interviewer / Host (Tim Harford)]

Well, Don Perlman and lobbyists like him didn't get things all their own way. After the break, we will talk about some of the tactics that they used, but we will also be talking about how the small island nations found their voice to fight back. Stay with us. And Doug.

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[Joe Robertson]

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[Tim Harford]

A young British family is attempting to sail around the world when disaster strikes. Their boat is hit by killer whales and it sinks in seconds. All they have left is a life raft and each other. How will they survive? The true story of a family's fight for survival. Hosted by Becky Milligan. This is Adrift, an Apple Original podcast produced by Blanchard House. Apple TV subscribers get special early access to the entire season. Follow and listen on Apple Podcasts.

[Interviewer / Host (Tim Harford)]

We're back and I'm talking to Joe Robertson, the co writer of the hit play Kyoto.

[Tim Harford]

Joe One of the challenges, both for.

[Interviewer / Host (Tim Harford)]

People seeking consensus on climate, but also for you and the other, Joe, while you were writing the play, is that there are so many people involved. The cast of characters is enormous. We had 158 nations represented at Kyoto. So how did you decide who you were going to focus on and who was going to fade into the background?

[Joe Robertson]

My co writer, Joe, and I went through a whole process of, okay, how do you tell this story in the most effective way possible. It was really important to represent this growing, ever strengthening body of developing countries, which is represented by the bloc, the G77, in the UN, you know, and they become an ever, ever more important voice in these negotiations. So we compressed 120 countries down into three or four. Tanzania, who led the G77, China, which obviously remains one of the most important countries involved in these negotiations. And then, as you say, the small island states, which played a crucial role in this whole history and still do to this day, because the problem with climate is it's less so now, but it was then sort of a future thing. This is something down the line we have to be worried about. And for the island states, that wasn't true. It was an immediate threat to their states, to the health, to the continuing life of their islands. And in 1992, they come together and form a bloc, a new bloc, the alliance of small island states, which is like a firework set off in the middle of the UN coming together and forming this huge alliance. They become much more difficult to ignore and they become the moral compass of the negotiations.

[Interviewer / Host (Tim Harford)]

Yeah, I mean, it's an amazing moment in the play. It's really dramatic.

[Narrator / Actor]

The conditional tense is no longer sufficient for us. Sea level rise will threaten survival.

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Western Samoa rises. First they support Kiribat.

[Narrator / Actor]

It will drown our crops.

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Then the Republic of Nauru seconds this and want it in the minutes.

[Narrator / Actor]

It will salinate our fresh water supplies.

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Followed by Trinidad and Tobago, the Bahamas, Barbados, Bangladesh.

[Narrator / Actor]

It will bleach our coral reefs and kill our mangrove forests.

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Tanzania stands with the island states. The developing world will no longer be brushed aside.

[Narrator / Actor]

It will erode our coastlines. It will destroy our homes.

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Mauritius, St. Lucia.

[Narrator / Actor]

It will displace us from our land.

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The Cook Islands, the Maldives.

[Narrator / Actor]

It is displacing us.

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The Federated States of Micronesia.

[Narrator / Actor]

We will not drown in silence.

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A tidal wave of resentments, old and new, flood the conference hall.

[Interviewer / Host (Tim Harford)]

Another dramatic moment is the confrontation between your antihero don and a scientist, Dr. Ben Santa. He's a real character who's represented in the play what does Santa tell the conference and how does Don deal with him?

[Joe Robertson]

With climate, what you would expect is as emissions rise, so should the temperature. That's the theory, right? That's the hypothesis. And that's what's been happening, basically the start of the industrial revolution. But because correlation is not causation, you have to find something really unique that is causing that. Until then, it could be, you could write it down to solar flares or other things they discover. In 1995, Ben Santer and his colleagues discover while the lower atmosphere is warming, the upper atmosphere is cooling. They really figure out that man made emissions sort of sit between the lower and the upper atmosphere, trapping heat, causing the lower atmosphere to warm in the upper atmosphere to call. And that is what they call a fingerprint. And it becomes the moment when the scientists feel it is clear enough to say we can now confidently say that man made emissions are influencing the global climate. And this finds expression in Chapter 8 of the second IPCC assessment in 1995. Ben is asked to write Chapter 8 to bring together the evidence what is causing these changes in the climate. And so he sums it up in 12 words which go down in the history of all of these negotiations and of climate law. The balance of evidence suggests a discernible human influence on global climate. And it all hinges on that one word, discernible. And there's this very famous moment, it's actually in Madrid, they're arguing over the adjective and Don is there, he's right in the room, and as are lots of other stakeholders, and they debate what this word could be. And I think they go through 28 possible adjectives, starting with appreciable, then through observable, moderate, plausible, detectable, visible, identifiable, noticeable, until they land on this word word discernible. The balance of evidence suggests a discernible human influence on global climate. And that's the moment, that's the moment when they can say it's true. And what Don and his associates do is essentially commit a character assassination on Ben Santer. This is before Climategate, before the big cases of misinformation we've seen. They accused Ben of changing details within the chapter that were agreed in the room for publication. Now, what he was doing actually was, was just sort of fulfilling IPCC formatting regulations so that all the chapters of the book aligned. But they used those little referencing changes, punctuation changes, word changes, to argue that actually he was committing fraud against the population of the world. It kind of destroys Ben's life. The stories are horrible. The Nazi Party of Germany publishes an address on the Internet. It's one of the first doxings we can actually find in the history of the Internet. They tried to get him tried at the Hague for crimes against humanity alongside congressional investigations and threats to his job. And his son sleeps with a wooden sword next to his bed because he's so scared of people playing dead rats on his doorstep. And in that moment, that's when I think the battle between the sort of the climate deniers and those who believe in all this gets really toxic. And it's the beginning of a new chapter in these culture wars.

[Interviewer / Host (Tim Harford)]

I was curious about the power that Don had in reality. So in the play, he's really pulling a lot of the strings. There's this one really memorable scene where there's a Japanese proposal. He basically goes to the Chinese delegate and says, you realize this is really an American proposal. These guys are playing with you. And then he goes to the Americans and go, you realize this is really a Chinese proposal. He torpedoes everything because everybody believes him. I was curious to what extent, you know, exaggerated that for dramatic effect and to what extent you really think actually, you know, what's this one guy? And if it hadn't been for this one guy, everything would have been smooth. Yeah.

[Joe Robertson]

There is an element of dramatisation. Everything is as much as possible. Based on the research, we got a lot of information from the brilliant book Merchants of Doubt. The sequence you described is early in the play when we're sort of showing the toolbox of tactics that people like Don't. And it wasn't just Don, but Don was very much at the forefront and, you know, probably the most effective of all of these kinds of lobbyists. So that's called double diplomacy, sort of playing countries off against each other. They challenged the science, they emphasized the costs of action. And for Don, most importantly, being present in every single second, almost no one else in that entire period of time was at every second of the talks more than him. And that includes some of the heads of delegations. And that level, that sort of total immersion in every detail, every word, every meeting. He was so ahead of everybody else. He knew the rules of procedure back to front. He could quote it. He knew how to play the system. He had these alliances with states as well as with individual delegates. A good example is in Berlin. He realizes that in the rules of procedure, there's a problem. How do you adopt a protocol is a big question. And in the convention that was agreed in 1992, it only said that each country has one vote. And so through his proxies in the south, Saudi Arabian delegation, they bring it up and they say, well, you know, what majority is required? Is it 2/3? Is it, you know, 3/4 majority or whatever? And when it's clear that there is no clarity, they bracket the rule. It's Rule 22, I believe they bracket the rule. And a bracket means it's no longer sort of enshrined, it's up for debate. And without voting rule, it meant that every decision, every sort of adoption of a protocol could essentially be vetoed by an individual country. One country could stand up at the end, object, and you know, to go back to our analogy, that would mean that 169 people didn't get dinner if one person objected to the restaurant. That rule still applies to this day. Even at COP30 this year in Belem in Brazil, they will be operating under a consensus model of agreement that began, you know, as a result of Don and the OPEC states back in 1995.

[Interviewer / Host (Tim Harford)]

So we've been talking about the antihero. Let us talk about a surprising hero, a man who I think will be known to British listeners, certainly British listeners of my age, John Prescott Presa, who was the Deputy prime minister of the UK elected with Tony Blair in 1997. So he'd only been deputy prime minister for about six months when the Kyoto talks happened. Tell us about Prescott and the role he played.

[Joe Robertson]

He has this sort of reputation, you know, as the one who connects with voters with his fist, as it were.

[Interviewer / Host (Tim Harford)]

Somebody threw an egg at him and he just punched the guy.

[Joe Robertson]

On the election trail. Yeah, he's a bit, you know, a little bit of a joke sometimes. But in researching the play, what we realized, he was absolutely integral to the success of Kyoto. His history of negotiation went all the way back to his youth when he was working in the Merchant Navy in the union. And his job would be to mediate between sailors and the companies and between sort of roaring factions within the union and put down riots of thousands of sailors who were drunk and refusing to go back aboard. So he comes with this amazing ability to sort of cajole and with a huge amount of resilience, but also intellect, understanding how to listen, how to find out people's bottom lines, how to keep them talking, how to find routes through when things seemingly are intractable. And, you know, he did the same in the Labour party in the 1990s, from sort of an old labor to a new Labor. He was this sort of mediator in the center of that. And he was central in Kyoto. So he arrives. I think it's the Netherlands is supposed to be representing the EU in the negotiations, and the EU negotiates as a bloc of 15 countries at that time, and the Netherlands just doesn't turn up. So he. He's unexpectedly becomes the lead negotiator for the European Union. And his big slogan, his big sort of cri de kur, was we've just got to keep walking and talking. And that's what he does. He manages to get Japan up to 6%. He manages to get America on board. He's in all the back rooms and corridors. He famously makes the Japanese delegate cry because of the power of his persuasion. And when we spoke to Raul Estrada, he said, john was a warrior.

[Interviewer / Host (Tim Harford)]

But despite his best efforts, there were still huge disagreements. And I think this is not just about disinformation or troublemaking. It's a fundamental clash of interests between China and America. China, this huge developing nation, now by far the world's largest emitter of carbon dioxide. But at the time, they were not. But everyone could see it was on the way, and they felt that. That it was unfair that they should have to curtail their ambitions when the world had basically been polluted by the Americans and the Europeans, not by them. Meanwhile, the Americans are looking over their shoulder at the Chinese and saying, well, why do we have to curtail our emissions if these guys, China and India, don't do anything? And it led to, I think, genuine deadlock for a long time.

[Joe Robertson]

It seems to me this is the central tension at the heart of the climate movement since the very beginning. And to this day, it's about whose responsibility is this problem to solve. And, you know, China and India and lots of developing nations who, you know, at that moment were developing at pace, doing what the west had done a hundred years before. Their central argument was, we didn't cause this problem. You did. You have enjoyed the status of economic superpower built on the limitless use of fossil fuels. Why should we be denied the same? You have caused this problem. It must be yours to solve. And at the same time, we should be allowed to develop as fast and as quickly as you did, using the same resources that you did. And how you square that circle is the fundamental problem of solving climate change.

[Interviewer / Host (Tim Harford)]

Yeah. So on the final day of the conference, the Chinese are threatening to walk out. The Americans are threatening to walk out. The Europeans are dancing around numbers. The island nations are reminding everybody that their very survival depends on radical emission cuts. And the Saudi Arabians are demanding compensation for potential loss of earnings it's utter chaos. And to cap it all, the chairman of COP3 has disappeared. So where is Estrada? Can an agreement be reached? And do we need global unanimity to cut emissions?

[Tim Harford]

Find out after the break.

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[Tim Harford]

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[Interviewer / Host (Tim Harford)]

We are back, and I am talking to Joe Robertson, who is one of the writers of the play Kyoto. So it is the final day of the Kyoto conference. It is hurtling towards disaster. And, Joe, you've had the privilege of interviewing many of the people who were there on that day. What did they tell you about the atmosphere?

[Joe Robertson]

It's a mixture of sort of PTSD and sort of utter excitement. So Estrada, the chairman, he disappears and he actually goes for a nap.

[Interviewer / Host (Tim Harford)]

Wise man.

[Joe Robertson]

Yeah, wise man, absolutely. And has a nap, goes back to his hotel, has dinner with his wife, Leticia, and then comes back to a conference center, which is a bit like dawn of the Dead. You know, you've got delegates literally sprawled out asleep. Coffee is run out, food has run out. There's rumors that toilet roll is running out as well. The conference staff are clearing away furniture because they've got an event the next morning. Some people say there was a wedding the next morning with a bride and groom waiting. So when you enter this final negotiation with Estrada, who's refreshed, he just absolutely powers through. They don't start the final session till about 11:15 at night. The interpreters leave after, like, midnight. So suddenly people have got to sort of translate between themselves. Then the president of the conference, the Japanese president, sort of the host, Hiroshi Oki, suddenly resigns in the middle of the final session. He just takes off his badge and says, I' to go back to Tokyo because my prime minister is facing a confidence vote. So he heads off to the bullet train. They spend about four or five hours arguing over emissions trading, which is just one paragraph in one article of 28. And then when that is, finally a compromise is agreed at about 4am or something, they then start Article 1 through 28 and spend another sort of six hours going line by line through every. Every sentence of the. Of the protocol. The scenes are sort of farcical, but kind of amazing.

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We could separate the paragraph from the article on commitments, comma, to create an interim arrangement. Question mark.

[Narrator / Actor]

Not without bracing the ellipsis with an apostrophe comma, so we can properly parenthesize the quotation mark, exclamation mark. Good point, well made, Mr. Chairman. Comma, we object to italicizing the close brackets to colon the question mark.

[Interviewer / Host (Tim Harford)]

They are arguing over commas, but they're not only arguing over commas because, you know, whether developing countries participate or not, it's like that's not a side issue.

[Joe Robertson]

Absolutely. And just prior to the actual conference itself, the US Senate had voted unanimously not to ratify any protocol agreed in Kyoto that didn't include developing countries. So you have from the get go the sort of Damocles hanging over the conference, because without that, America won't ratify. And, you know, if America doesn't ratify, what's the point in having a protocol? And the commas, you know, commas are really important in this process. As a writer, commas are about punctuation is about creating clarity. In climate negotiations. They're actually about creating ambiguity. A comma allows for a slight ambiguity in a sentence that allows two different delegations to go home and claim victory.

[Interviewer / Host (Tim Harford)]

And there's this dramatic moment where Raul Estrada is just gaveling his way through. He's hammering one clause after another.

[Liberty Mutual Advertiser]

The article remains as is agreed. You can't just gavel through. I just did Article 2, but talk about high wire chairmanship. I see no objection. So agree. We already agreed on Article 3. Thank God. So on to Article 4. The USA has the floor.

[Narrator / Actor]

We object to the missing preposition in the fourth line.

[Liberty Mutual Advertiser]

Silence, please. The US will blow up the talks for a missing preposition. I'm gaveling agreed.

[Joe Robertson]

By the end, he's gaveling through and you can hear the delegates going, agreed, agreed. And it sort of rises into this crescendo of, of people through both exhaustion, but also realizing, oh my God, it's going to happen. They're willing it and they're willing this moment of agreement into existence. And I think at about 10:15, something like that, Raoul is able to bring down his gavel using the sort of the famous lines. I recommend the Kyoto Protocol for adoption by unanimity. And that's the moment that the Kyoto Protocol is agreed.

[Interviewer / Host (Tim Harford)]

It's almost like a magic trick when you see it on stage. And they do agree in the end. Of course, the US Senate doesn't ratify the protocol. On the one hand, you have presented us with this kind of amazing moment and you've shown all attention and you've shown what it took to reach agreement, but given what then followed, how enthusiastic should we be about that moment of agreement?

[Joe Robertson]

There are big debates about this and, you know, especially now, I think as global multilateralism is in doubt and some people say it's dead in a world of strong men and in a world of sort of ever declining international cooperation. But as you know, Kyoto is undoubtedly like an amazing moment of the proof of what can happen when countries do come together. Now, America didn't ratify, but the fact that they didn't walk out allowed this moment to exist on the international stage, for it to become this line in the sand. And most of the developed world ratify, with the exception of a couple, by and large, all of them really met their targets and many exceeded their targets. No one can say things are going well in climate. I think without Kyoto, we'd be in a much worse position. And on the continuum of multilateral negotiations that leads to Copenhagen and then through to Paris, which is when the developing world finally really does come on board in this substantial way in 2015. We would not be where we are today without that moment.

[Interviewer / Host (Tim Harford)]

On the other hand, just from the point of view of climate change, I look at the UK's emissions, for example. So our emissions, carbon dioxide emissions per capita, are lower than they were in 1860 because we stopped burning coal and we switched to natural gas, which is cleaner. And then we've reduced a lot of natural gas, and now there's a lot of wind and there's a lot of solar, and also a lot of stuff is more efficient. And there's a similar story to be told about many developed countries. So although global emissions are still near a peak, there's a lot of progress been made and a lot of that progress seems to be technology driven. I'm just wondering how much of this actually can we credit Kyoto for and how much of it is just, you know. Well, actually it was German solar subsidies, it was Chinese industrial policy, it was the UK's dash for gas, and actually none of it really was about this global agreement.

[Joe Robertson]

I wouldn't be so bold as to say without Kyoto that those things wouldn't have happened. But back in the 80s, no one would have been able to tell you what climate change was. But what this process did and what the human beings at the heart of this process did was to bring this into the public consciousness and into the political policy making consciousness in a way which became completely impossible to ignore. And there is a before and an after Kyoto, and we live in an after Kyoto world where the threads run through all elements of policy making all around the world. And some amazing, some of the most amazing human beings I've ever met, but flawed, working in systems which are human systems which are flawed, trying to influence human behavior which is flawed, but they are the best we have. They are the best structures that we have. You know, the United nations and the idealism of the multilateral process is, I think, you know, and this is where my artist, as an artist comes out, I think, beautiful, because I think the ambition of those structures is so noble. And yes, you can criticize them and they can be criticised as talking shops and all the rest, but when we meet the people involved who have devoted and dedicated their whole lives to just nudging the dial a little as much as they possibly can, that really inspires me and leaves me with a huge amount of admiration.

[Interviewer / Host (Tim Harford)]

Your play Kyoto begins with Don Perlman. It ends with his widow. Looking back on what he did and reflecting on his life, do you think he ever regretted what he did?

[Joe Robertson]

I think Don very, very firmly believed that what he was doing was right. You know, he's an old school Republican. He owed everything to America. He's the son of immigrants who gave him and his family everything. And I think he saw in the negotiations an attempt to change a world order that was to the detriment of the United States of America. You know, and I think he thought that the negotiations were less about the science and more about America's place in the world. And I think he fought and ultimately died on that hill, you know, and do I think he would have changed as the science got clearer and clearer? It was pretty clear in 2005 when he died. But, you know, maybe.

[Interviewer / Host (Tim Harford)]

I mean, the interesting thing is it's not just about the science. Even if you, if you look at climate change and you go burning fossil fuels definitely warms the atmosphere, it's definitely going to cause trouble. It will cause extreme weather. Even if you accept that, it doesn't necessarily mean you have to act. You could still argue it's not worth the cost of abandoning fossil fuels, or you could say it's worth abandoning the cost of fossil fuels, but it's not our business. So I think even if you accept the science, there's still room for disagreement.

[Joe Robertson]

Absolutely. I mean, we use a line that came from Dr. Xu Kong Zhong, who was the head of the Chinese delegation for much of the 90s and in Kyoto, and he says, China will not remain poor so that the world can breathe. You have in there the very problem. And Don himself says, someone says, is the science clear? And he says, well, what science, political science, social science, economic science. It's not the right question. Fossil fuels and our use of the natural resources of this planet are a part of every single aspect of our life, from transport to industry to manufacturing to our economies on every conceivable scale. It's so deep in every aspect of our behavior on a personal level and on a global level. So it's a complicated thing to solve.

[Interviewer / Host (Tim Harford)]

It is indeed so Cautionary Tales. We're all about true stories that teach us lessons. And on the day that this conversation is released should also be the last day of the COP30 conference in Brazil. I was curious what you hope that delegates in Belement might learn from the Kyoto process and from all the previous cops.

[Joe Robertson]

Definitely have naps in the Prescott way. Just keep walking and talking. And I think that applies not just to the cop, but to all of us in this really difficult moment that the world is facing, when it feels like multilateralism is at risk, when it feels like conversation between ourselves is at risk. What Kyoto shows me every time I speak to the people involved and watch the show is actually all we have is discussion, is conversation, is the ability to talk and to work through our problems and our issues, however intractable, however deeply felt, however entrenched. Just keep walking and talking.

[Interviewer / Host (Tim Harford)]

Joe Robertson, thank you so much for joining us on Cautionary Tales.

[Joe Robertson]

Thank you so much, Tim. It's a pleasure.

[Tim Harford]

As many of you know, I am a huge fan of tabletop games and Christmas is the perfect time to be playing them. With that in mind, we have invited the inventor of games such as the Gathering and King of Tokyo, Richard Garfield, to join me for a special episode of Cautionary Questions. Richard knows everything worth knowing about game design, and he also has some questions for me.

[Interviewer / Host (Tim Harford)]

But if you want to ask him.

[Tim Harford]

A question, be sure to get it in to talesushkin FM by the end of the month. Cautionary Tales is written by me, Tim Harford, with Andrew Wright, Alice Fiennes and Ryan Dilley. It's produced by Georgia Mills and Marilyn Rust. The sound design and original music. Music are the work of Pascal Wise, additional sound design by Carlos San Juan at Brainaudio and Dan Jackson. Ben Nadaff Haffrey edited the scripts. The show also wouldn't have been possible.

[Interviewer / Host (Tim Harford)]

Without the work of Jacob Weisberg, Greta.

[Tim Harford]

Cohn, Eric Sandler, Carrie Brodie, Christina Sullivan, Keira Posey and Owen Miller. Cautionary Tales is a production of Pushkin Industries. If you like the show, please remember.

[Interviewer / Host (Tim Harford)]

To share, rate and review. It really does make a difference to us. And if you want to hear it.

[Tim Harford]

Ad free and receive a bonus audio episode, video episode and members only newsletter every month. Why not join the Cautionary club? To sign up, head to patreon.com that's patreon P-A T R E O-N.com cautionaryclub. Attention parents and grandparents. If you're looking for a gift that's more than just a toy, give them something that inspires confidence and adventure all year long. Give them a Guardian Bike, the easiest, safest and number one kids bike on the market. With USA Made Kids specific frames and patented safety technology, kids are learning to ride in just one day. No training wheels needed. It's why Guardian is America's favourite kids bike and the New York Times and.

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