Careful carbon accounting has been the presumed basis of cap-and-trade programs as envisioned by the Kyoto Protocol and advocated as the best approach for national climate policy.
At the Bush-Putin meeting, the administration called for Russia's membership of the World Trade Organisation once it has signed a protocol outlining the reforms needed to get its economy ready, which may take years.
Moreover, had developing countries been able to realise significant carbon-trade values for natural forests under the first round of the Kyoto protocol, incentives to keep those forests intact would have been much strengthened.
With it have gone fears that international environmental agreements like the Kyoto Protocol on climate change could be made subservient to the WTO's rules on trade.