12/11/1990 | Monday | Decisive day 92 of 100
World Wide Web (W3) launches in Britain

Full list  |  Top UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan 1996-2006: 'Globalization operates on Internet time.' Mitchell Kapor: 'Getting information off the Internet is like taking a drink from a fire hydrant.'

BRITAIN, EUROPE. On November 12, 1990 a proposal emerged that germinated the most nuerrmous and the most geographically widespread connection of computers and the information they captured in history. Pushed by Tim Berners-Lee the central and inspiring idea of the ‘World Wide Web’, or W3, was that computers owned by different people with different agendas could nevertheless share information through a series of electronic links not unlike a huge spiders web.  

Like many grand ideas that crystallised in the twentieth century (powered flight and powered space exploration to name just two) the underlying theory and thinking and above all titillation had floated around for some time before becoming practical. In the case of W3, ambitions to connect mechincal computers with human cognition leapt forward during World War Two, albeit in the era when computers were so large they occupied a whole room and needed a whole squad of troops to control and condition. But even then there was little real actionable success. Even Charles Babbage in the 1820s, the British spiritual father of mechnical rather than cognitive computing, recognized computers would benefit from connection to each other.

Partly to help advance space exploration Eisenhower in the 1950s had established the Advanced Research Projects Agency which set up a connection of computers throughout America (ARPA or ARPANET), in locations varying from Harvard University in Massachusetts to the select and often slithery corporations in New York to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. By the 1970s this netwrork had already fine-tuned one important strand to the internet tapestry, the use of File-Transfer Protocol (FTP) to exchange large files between computers.

But FTP and other advances in exchnaging bundles of information and knowledge were merely downpayments on the bigger opportunity. The most critical and easiest countable breakthrough in 1990 was a simple ‘hypertext’ universal language that all computers could send and receive. Elitism and separatism and regionalism were in a stroke disabled. From this universal computing language it was a short step to publish the first web site. Also a Tim Berners-Lee creation this modestly proclaimed: ‘The WorldWideWeb (W3) is a wide-area hypermedia information retrieval initiative aiming to give universal access to a large universe of documents.’ Hypermedia? A word that shared the same fate as other clumsy tech-speak like 'Electronic Mail Systems', later e-mail, and infobahn and cyberworld, all of which thankfully ebbed away.

This central idea expanded massively. It was not long before programs like Java and Javascript worked out how to group instructions on computers other than the computers where they were read. In this way even more complex information could share very quickly despite the attempts of some, usually the powerful or the pinioned, to pixellate out the bad news. The internet network soon connected computers in the tens of millions in all of the world’s continents. 

The comparative scale of acquisition of users was incredible. It took nearly forty years for radio to get a market of at least 50 million users and television nearly fifteen years to achieve 50 million users. Internet slashed the time and in under five years there were 50 million users. By the end of the 1990s, right at the end of the century, worldwide internet users exceeded 400 million (around half in America) in over 90% of the countries in the world.

A particularly canny and significant idea of Mr Berners-Lee was to avoid profit. This was perhaps fortuitous given the early adopters of the new invention scarecelty elevated the moral tone of syberspace at a time when claiming the mnoral highground, at least the moral hightop, mihgt have been deft. Specifically there were no patents or royalties due and thus the web was something the world could use freely. The more people used it, the more value it produced, and so even more people contributed – the so-called network effect. 

Before the decade was out internet entrpreneurs gained increasing presence. Mr Berners-Lee never himself won the Time Person of the Year. But Andy Grove of Intel was Time Magazine's Person of the Year in 1997, and Jeff Bezos of Amazon, a book shop that capture the early internet wave, was Time Magazine's Person of the Year in 1999. (Bill Gates of Microsoft shared in 2005 with his wife Melinda with Bono the pop singer, though more for his philanthropy work than the contribution of Microsoft to the internet).

The spiral in communication dramatically changed the quantity and speed of global communication. Before1990 and the internet space and time still separated people in large measure. Mr Berners-Lee invention meant that information and individual expressions and feelings could scatter incredibly far and wide and quick – effectively nearly instantly. Overnight the communication leaps from the last century like postage or telephone or telegraph became trivial. 

17/01/1991 | Thursday | Decisive day 93 of 100
UN-mandated forces attack Iraqi forces in Kuwait

Full list  |  Top US President George Bush, 1991: 'Our objectives are clear. Saddam Hussein's forces will leave Kuwait. The legitimate government of Kuwait will be restored to its rightful place and Kuwait once again will be free. Iraq will eventually comply with all relevant United Nations resolutions...' Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, 1991: 'Allah is on our side. That is why we will beat the aggressor.'

KUWAIT, MIDDLE EAST. Oddly for a century dominated by war there had never been a war fought live on television. When Operation Desert Storm started on this day that changed – and with it introduced a new era of war reporting. From now on citizens could watch wars as they happened. 

The background was Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in August 1990. Probably this was the most serious miscalculation in twentieth century history next to Japan's belief they could defeat America militarily in the 1940s. After invasion tiny, though not poor, Kuwait quickly asked the world for military help and in particular the century’s ascendant and oil-hungry superpower: ‘We appeal to all our friends around the world, including the United States, to come to our aid and assistance…’ 

The pleas were heard. Within a week the UN Security Council, amongst the more disunited bodies in world governance, voted 15-0 against Iraq's annexation of Kuwait. Within a month the world's biggest military alliance since World War Two assembled. So serious was America at protecting the undemocratic and patriarchal Kuwait that it mobilised reservists for the first time since 1968. The world wasn't quite sure what to make of it. It watched with interest as the 82nd Airborne settled into defensive positions in Saudi Arabia. But surely it was all sabre rattling? Surely it was just a way of securing the release of 9,000 foreign hostages held in Baghdad?

But it was not just about American determination. Desert Storm was also remarkable for the alliance it secured. Arab set against Arab, neighbour against neighbour, and countries like Egypt and Syria even sent troops. When the trigger was finally pulled close to 500,000 foreign troops from dozens of countries faced a similar number of Iraqis. Following the huge air assault Iraq launched Scud missiles against Israel. When defeat was obvious to them obvious over five hundred oil wells ignited. For over 100,000 Iraqi fatalities the allies suffered 300 dead – a kill ratio of over 1:300. 

Following defeat twelve years of sanctions and a brace of resolutions were passed by the UN Security Council. All required Iraq to disarm. Saddam Hussein and the Baathist elite honoured none of them which by 2003 proved to be another serious miscalculation. But then again, maybe Saddam was just honouring the name his parents chose: in Arabic Saddam means 'one who confronts'"

25/06/1991 | Tuesday | Decisive day 94 of 100
Croatia and Slovenia secede from Yugoslavia

Full list  |  Top John D. Scanlan, US Ambassador to Yugoslavia, 1990: 'Since World War II Yugoslavia has, on the whole, provided a commendable example of national, cultural, and ethnic harmony in a multinational state. We hope Yugoslavia can continue this proud tradition.' Milan Panic, Prime Minister of Yugoslavia 1992-93, writing to US President Bill Clinton, 1994: 'I do not think that any of the Balkan leaders want more war, regardless of what they say in public. They are weary of war, fear that it could broaden and escalate, and would welcome your assistance in working out the compromise. I urge you to consider inviting all of the (former) Yugoslav leaders to meet with you in the United States.

YUGOSLAVIA, EUROPE. The slow and tortuous break-up of Yugoslavia defined not only Balkans but important parts of European and American foreign policy throughout the 1990s. To the world it was little comfort that the troubles held deep roots in failed decisions after World War One. Amalgamating the Balkans into one unified Yugoslavia may have reduced the possibility of larger powers having to support one entity over another. But it still left European and American statesmen with a constant nervousness of how the feuding parties could entangle the world in conflict. 

Ultimately the world privately recognised that Yugoslavia was so fragile it held together with habits and odd freaks of history like Cold War which tolerated brutal dictators like President Tito. When Tito died in 1980 it would not be long before Croatia and Slovenia declared they no longer wished to be part of Tito’s Balkan creation. Even then they might have thought twice of seceding from Belgrade if they had known where it would all lead.

The fragmentation of Yugoslavia involved, in the end, at least nine smaller wars or rebellions. The world watched on nervously, loath to become involved but loath to ignore where it all might lead. Some were brief. The Slovenian War of Independence was short and relatively quick. But some were not so brief. The Croatian fight for independence lasted for much longer (1991-1995) and spiralled to include not just fights with the Yugoslav/Serbian Army but also with Serb rebels. Croatia's Serb minority wanted their own nation. Yet they succeeded only in igniting ethnic cleansing of Serbs in Croatia. The surviving Serbs fled into Serbia. It was not a peaceful place. The Serb province of Kosovo erupted into war in 1998. Added into the mix was the Bosnian Civil War and soon Muslims, Christians, Croats, Serbs, Macedonia, everyone was fighting everyone. 

Finally in 1994 NATO became involved. Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic was indicted for crimes against humanity (and was tried in The Hague). Limited NATO bombing of Serb positions around the capital of Sarajevo happened during the peace negotiations. 

Full list  |  Top US President Ronald Regan, 1983: 'If the Soviet Union let another political party come into existence, they would still be a one-party state, because everybody would join the other party.' USSR Premier Gorbachev farewell statement, December 25, 1991: 'Society now has liberty, it has been emancipated politically and spiritually. And that is the main achievement that we have not fully comprehended because we have not yet learned how to use that liberty.'

RUSSIA, EUROPE. The precipitating events in the demise of the Soviet Union date to August of 1991. Taking advantage of an absent President Gorbachev, who was away from Moscow on holiday near the warmer Black Sea, the vice president, prime minister and defence minister declared a state of emergency. The holidaying Mr Gorbachev was placed under house arrest. There, so the rebellious thinking went, was the best place to prevent his further easing controls over Soviet republics.

Meanwhile attempts were made to arrest another liberalising force nearer to home, the Russian leader Boris Yeltsin. This proved to be a bridge too far. Thanks in part to dramatic responses like Mr Yeltsin's speech on top of a tank the coup collapsed within days and Mr Gorbachev returned to Moscow a free man.

But the failed coup set of a chain of events that not even Mr Gorbachev or Mr Yeltsin could have foreseen, or perhaps wished for. Within days on September 6, 1991, the USSR recognised the independence of three states in the Baltic (Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia). A new economic and trading community set within the heart of the previously socialist USSR appeared on October 18. On December 1, Ukraine voted for independence from the USSR. On December 8, the Ukrainian parliament, along with parliaments in Russia and Belarus, declared the Soviet Union was effectively over. By December 25, 1991, Mr Gorbachev bowed to the obvious and declared the Soviet Union officially over. The American President Bush said the same thing to Americans. Short of eight decades after the Russian Revolution the USSR was dead.

The end of one-party rule by Communists brought to a final conclusion something that dominated political thought during the twentieth century. Could socialism work? Could the world change its methods of production? Was there something better than shareholder capitalism and liberal democracy? 

If one country answered those questions Russia in general and the larger USSR that it glued together was surely it. Yet from the start were signs that socialism had severe limitations. As far back as 1928, not even one decade into the life of the USSR, Stalin's first Five-Year Plan prioritised building socialism at home over revolution overseas. It was already a step back from the global revolutionary whirlwind envisioned by the original hardliners like Lenin and Trotsky and others who had pioneered the Russian Revolution of 1917.

The step back from hard core global revolution continued after Stalin died. Stalin's successor Kruschev further relaxed controls in the 1950s. And even though Breszhnev and Chernenko in the 1960s and 1970s were resistant to change the 1980s of President Mikhail Gorbachev were part of a subtle yet ascendant trend. Perhaps it was an age thing. Andropov was in his late 60s and Chernenko in his 70s. When the Politburo finally selected a younger man with some plausibly youthful vim and vigour, Gorbachev, aged only 54 when he came to power, the  reforming agendas of Perestroika (reform) and Glasnost (openness) led within six years to the dissolution of the USSR. 

True, along the way from a bold idea to a practical failure were momentous accomplishments. The USSR played a significant role, to some views the significant role, in defeating European Nazism during the 1940s. From the end of World War Two until its dissolution it changed puny agrarian entities into muscular industrial powers. The USSR was a global superpower – a period of militarism approaching half a century. Scientific accomplishments included launch into space of the first satellite (Sputnik 1) and first human being (Yuri Gagarin). 

But lurking underneath the genes of the USSR was a Russian strand that wanted more than just aspirations. The USSR was famously a huge amalgamation of former Tsarist colonies. This rather than economic or social genius was why the Soviet presence stretch from the Baltic states in the west, on the fringes of the Atlantic Ocean, to Siberia in the east, on the fringes of the Pacific Ocean. By the end of the twentieth century the USSR encompassed 290 million people spread throughout 22 million square kilometres and 11 time zones. Yet it was dominated by ethnic Russians, who were 50% of the Soviet population. After the Russians the most populous Soviet citizenry was not even a third of the Russian presence - the Ukrainians at 15%. Then came the Uzbeks (6%) and 150 different ethnic groups. When the collapse finally came it was pro-capitalist and pro-reform Yeltsin who received the powers formally held by the President of the USSR. 

19/01/1992 | Sunday | Decisive day 96 of 100
China starts capitalism reforms

Full list  |  Top Chinese premiere Deng Xiao-ping, 1986: 'The main task of socialism is to develop the productive forces, steadily improve the life of the people, and keep increasing the material wealth of the society. Therefore, there can be no communism with pauperism, or socialism with pauperism. So to get rich is no sin.' British architect John Seargent, 1994: 'I have seen the future of much of the Pacific Rim, and I am scared out of my mind. One quarter of the population of the planet, certainly about 1.2 billion Chinese, are about to transform their standard of living, and in the process, wreck a large proportion of the globe.'

CHINA, ASIA. Dominating the economic landscape of the twentieth century was strikingly unequal per capita wealth. Western liberal democracies were relatively rich at the beginning of the twentieth century and remained so at the end. Meanwhile the vast bulk of population, and in particular Communist China and Socialist India which comprised half of humanity between them, remained relatively poor. This in part explains the differences in population growth. China in 1900 was still tied with India in population terms and at the front end of a population explosion that was to form its relative global placement in the twentieth century. In 1900 the Chinese population was around 500 millions. That was big and nearly double the just over 200 million in Europe. By 2000 and despite a series of civil wars and probably the most misconceived adventures in public administration of the twentieth century China’s population had more than doubled to 1.2 billion. By contrast Europe had increased to only 300 million. This left it nearer to one-quarter the size of China where in 1900 it had been around half the size in 1900.   

China was its own unique mystery compared to India. During the century China had improved little in its relative social and economic status. Yet this was despite largely avoiding the colonisation that India experienced with Britain. China's population, dominated by socialist control and an ascendant Communist Party, remained as severely poor as in India. 

Clarified on this day was whether China's under-performance would continue into the twenty-first century. China's leader Deng Xiao-ping toured southern states of China with fairly clear signals that soon galvanised economic reform. Pure socialism was over. Capitalism would be tolerated in parts and within these special-economic zones entrepreneurs, once despised and punished as capitalist roaders, would be free to create wealth.

The remarkable aspects of this event was that it emerged from within the claustrophobic hand of Communism. This had been the undeniable central presence throughout China in the second half of the twentieth century. Even though Mao had died in 1976 his heritage of control and anti-capitalist economic thought lingered. His successor Deng Xiao-ping initiated only cautious economic reforms. These featured things like modest liberalisation of agriculture and modest diplomatic efforts like establishing relations with the United States and the USSR (1989). They did not alter much the fundamental direction of a socialist and planned China with lots of poor people. 

Deng Xiao-ping, by the way, won Time Magazine's Person of the Year twice (1978 and 1985), as did prominent British leader Winston Chruchill (1940 and 1949) and the USSR Mikhail Gorbachov (1987 and 1989). Other double-winners included Stalin (1939 and 1942 - Hitler won it once in 1933). Singletons included West Germany's Konrad Adenauer (1953) and Willy Brandt (1970), France's Charles De Gaulle (1958) and the Philippines Corazon Aquino (1986). General Marshall won in both 1943 and 1947.

What influenced Deng's decision? Certainly the collapse of the socialist Soviet Union would be one. This had been declared officially over just weeks before his tour. Outside the country, though, was the Sino-British accord which would draw in the uber-capitalist Hong Kong to the uber-socialist China in 1997. Some way would be needed to square this circle. Deng’s idea was the ‘One Country, Two Systems’ formula. 

Reforms inside China also were also obviously needed. Although Deng oversaw the removal of Hu Yaobang for failure to handle student protests in 1986 he also tolerated in his place another reformist, Zhao Ziyang, When Hu Yaobang’s death in 1989 sparked pro-democracy protests in Tiananmen Square the liberal Zhao Ziyang was replaced by the tougher Jiang Zemin. Even though students were massacred in the capital it was clear that more fundamental changes were needed. 

26/09/1992 | Saturday | Decisive day 97 of 100
South Africa ends apartheid

Full list  |  Top South African Prime Minister Johanes Strijdom, 1955: 'Either the white man dominates or the black man takes over. The only way the European can maintain supremacy is by domination. And the only way they can maintain domination is by withholding the vote from non-Europeans.' Malcolm X, American activist, 1965: 'You have to realize that up to 1959 Africa was dominated by the colonial powers. Having complete control over Africa the colonial powers of Europe projected the image of Africa negatively: jungle savages, cannibals, nothing civilized.'

SOUTH AFRICA, AFRICA. On September 26 in 1992 President FW de Klerk and ANC leader Nelson Mandela reached agreement on a process to end minority rule in South Africa. The weekend summit in Johannesburg paved the way towards ending one of history’s great crimes against humanity: apartheid. 

Apartheid itself, that is the Afrikaans term for separation of races, only dates officially from the 1940s. It first appeared in South Africa’s post-war election of 1948. But racial separation had scarred South Africa for much longer in many corrosive ways. Essentially the idea of separation, and supremacy, defined the country almost continuously from large-scale white settlement in the nineteenth century. It wasn't just Mahatma Gandhi fighting pass laws in the late 19th century (the law requiring non-whites to carry identification papers). It was everything in life, from which public toilet could be used, which public beach, which part of the public library, which hospitals. 

The shock that remains is perhaps not that apartheid happened but that it lasted until nearly the end of the twentieth century. During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries white supremacism appeared all over Africa and other continents too – North and South America, Australia, Asia. But these crimes ebbed away somewhere between the end of slavery in the early nineteenth century and the winds of change during the mid-twentieth century. Only apartheid, strengthened by the wealth of a country blessed by nature, lingered way beyond its shelf-life. 

Thankfully by the 1990s the pressure to end it was simply colossal. Some of the anti-apartheid pressure, in fairness, came from within the white minority of the country. White commentators had a small but notable audience when they talked of a 'Guilty Land' (Patrick von Rensburg) or of the crime of offering blacks 'Naught for your Comfort' (Trevor Huddleston). When South Africa was called the polecat of the world it was not by aggrieved black Africans but by dissident whites (Helen Suzman after the Sharpville massacre in 1960). 

But the reality was that official South African attempts to undo the deed were half-hearted and blatantly slow. Attempts to create black homelands in the 1970s were widely  treated with disdain. The response from within South Africa was black rebels like Steve Biko talking of Black Consciousness. When Mr Biko was killed by the authorities over 15,000 people attended his funeral - then a radically large gathering. Finally from without came sanctions imposed by America and the European Community. 

The precipitating factor of change was replacement of the white President P W Botha by the also white, but also more realistic, F W de Klerk. This eased the way to unbanning the ANC, in 1990, and then a referendum for power sharing. Perhaps ironically, or perhaps in final recognition of dissidents like Biko and von Rensburg and Huddleston and Suzman, whites voted for power-sharing by a 2:1 majority. In the following 1994 election, the first in the history of South Africa with universal suffrage, the ANC won 60% of votes. The former white regime won a mere 20%. De Klerk stayed in power but as vice president to the black President Nelson Mandela. He survived for merely two more years. Apartheid was dead, removed forever as a wound in the African continent, and so was his political career.

01/11/1993 | Monday | Decisive day 98 of 100
Maastricht Treaty on European Union signed in Holland

Full list  |  Top British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, 1988: 'We have not successfully rolled back the frontiers of the state in Britain, only to see them re-imposed at a European level, with a European super-state exercising a new dominance.' German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, 1992: 'The European Union Treaty within a few years will lead to the creation of what the founding fathers of modern Europe dreamed of after the war, the United States of Europe.'

THE NETHERLANDS, EUROPE. The Maastricht Treaty of November 1, 1992 triggered significantly closer economic and political union within Europe. The new European Union converted the often fractious mosaic into the world’s third most populous state. For the first time in European history there was a pan-continental network of signatories to one peaceful alliance. 

The genius in Maastricht was using economic law (reducing trade barriers among 350 million people) and not martial law to unite countries with dozens of historical feuds among them. Two thousand years earlier Romans tried but Pax Romana proved brittle when armies left. Holy Roman Emperors in the early second millennia also tried with their own armies, and failed, as did Napoleonic France in the nineteenth century and Nazi Germany in the twentieth century. All botched their attempt because in one form or another none of them found an economic reason for union. 

At one stage during the twentieth century the old European Community looked like all the continent deserved. By 1967 this included Belgium, France, Italy, Luxembourg, The Netherlands and West Germany looked as far as it could go. But warily excluded were Britain and Spain, two large economies but also two former imperial powers. Hopes for a United Europe (eerily similar to United States) went nowhere. The addition in 1986 of these two countries (plus Denmark, Greece, Ireland, and Portugal) seemed like the natural limit. Persistent nationalism would surely preclude any more union and make what existed impotent. Many in Britain and despite their new membership, for example, looked on Europe with ill-disguised disdain. Elites thought that Europe had more to learn from the island than Britain had to learn from a continuously fractious continent. Prime Minister John Major spoke of his refusal to ‘...risk Britain’s competitive position as the European magnet for inward investment.’ 

Yet Maastricht proved more was possible. Totally it joined an incredible twenty-five countries. The resulting European Union (no longer just a community) stretched from the Atlantic seaboard, including often-hesitant Scandinavia and Britain, to the Iberian Peninsula abutting Africa to the Balkans in the east. Within these borders were nearly four million square kilometres which as a country was smaller only to the two giants of China and India. The land space was bigger than the superpower United States. Most miraculous of all this new pan-European creation held together without a central army and still allowed each country to keep their national identity largely intact. As shifts in world history go they don’t come much bigger.

23/02/1997 | Sunday | Decisive day 99 of 100
Dolly the sheep cloned in Britain

Full list  |  Top US President Bill Clinton, 1997: 'Each human life is unique, born of a miracle that reaches beyond laboratory science, I believe we must respect this profound gift and resist the temptation to replicate ourselves.' British scientist Richard Dawkins, 1999: 'Anybody who objects to cloning on principle has to answer to all the identical twins in the world who might be insulted by the thought that there is something offensive about their very existence. Clones are simply identical twins.'

BRITAIN, EUROPE. Science provided the answer only right at the end of the century. The question had lingered around for decades and centuries even. Could the industrial era, with all the control it symbolised over nature, also allow humans control over themselves? Could they clone themselves? Could they replicate genetic bundles of DNA without the diluting effect of breeding – which brought one completely new bundle of DNA. The answer provided on this day is that, yes, it is possible. Life can be cloned. 

Dolly the sheep was cloned at Roslyn Institute, Edinburgh, Scotland, one of many fine Scottish scientific creations from the century. She lived for six years until 2003. The name of Dolly, by the way, was a pun on the source of the gene. It was taken from a mammary gland of the sheep. Dolly Parton, mammary glands, you work it out. 

Predictably Dolly raised religious concerns. President Clinton, a Baptist, spoke for many: ‘Each human life is unique, born of a miracle that reaches beyond laboratory science, I believe we must respect this profound gift and resist the temptation to replicate ourselves’. 

11/12/1997 | Thursday | Decisive day 100 of 100
Kyoto Treaty on climate control signed in Japan

Full list  |  Top UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, 1996-2006, speaking in 1994: 'The Greenland ice sheet is likely to be eliminated [within 50 years] unless much more substantial reductions in emissions are made than those envisaged [and will] probably be irreversible, this side of a new ice age.' US President George W Bush, 2001: 'First, we would not accept a treaty that would not have been ratified, nor a treaty that I thought made sense for the country.'

JAPAN, ASIA. The Kyoto Protocol was an amendment to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). One of the final global politivcal acts of the twentieth century, Kyoto recognized, first, that significant global warming was happening and, second, humans were largely responsible. 

In tightening the connection between global warming and human action Kyoto significantly and probably irreversibly altered the legacy of the twentieth century for how humans connected themselves and the environment they used and abused. No longer could humans consider themselves in a superior-inferior relationship. Humanity and nature was until further existed in a relationship based on the need for harmony and moderation. It might just be so serious that, as some concluded, every time somebody in the west turns on an electric kettle they help flood Bangladesh.

Kyoto came in response to the obvious. Ice sheets throughout the twentieth century were melting at both poles. Critically it was ice sheets on land and not ice already in the water as icebergs – which had already displaced more or less all the water they could. So the melting ice above land like Greenland and Antarctica was in effect 'new' water. As it melted into the seas huge quantities of fresh water increased sea levels. By some calculations the rise caused by the new melting ice could be as much as seven meters. That would be enough to make significant chunks of Bangladesh and numerous South Sea islands and the American state of Florida disappear – to name just a few of the affected countries.

The extraction of natural resources in the tewntieth century had been colossal. Around 1900 there were over 15 billion acres of forested land which after a trifling few years (in evolutionary terms) had slashed to under 8 billion acres in 2000. As well as depleted forests oil reserves too were significantly down. During 1900, around 150 million barrels of oil were extracted yearly but by the end of the century in 1999 this had rocketed to 24 billion barrels. In 1900 there were just a few thousand cars sold worldwide, mostly as novelty items that the rich enjoyed as leisure toys, but this reached over 50 million in 2000 and sold as an essential tool for living.

The central challenge and history-turning ambition in Kyoto was to dial the clock back. Going back to 1900 was simply impractical. But countries that ratified the protocol committed to reduce emissions to 1990 levels of carbon dioxide and five other greenhouse gases - methane, nitrous oxide, sulphur hexafluoride, Perfluorocarbons, and halogenoalkanes. This was meant to happen by the 2008-12 period – around two decades afterwards. (Alternatively countries exceeding their target could engage in emissions trading and in effect pay for over-polluting.)

Yet despite the urgency in the matter the treaty took a further eight years to be ratified by ‘55%’ – that is, by countries which account for fifty-five percent of carbon emissions. This may have included over 70 countries including Japan and all 15 European Union states. But only in 2005 had enough countries ratified the commitment for it to become a global mandate. The treaty itself expires in 2012. Meanwhile in the years after Kyoto carbon dioxide levels increased by 7% in France, 11% in Italy and 29% in Spain. The increase for western Europe as a whole was 5%. 

So whether Kyoto will actually make much difference remains debatable. America, the world's biggest polluter, and Australia, the worlds biggest coal exporter, were two notable non-ratifiers, Developing countries like India and China – together accounting for half the world’s population – were also exempt. No attempts were made to control for excessive consumption of meat - methane producing livestock use up one third of the earths surface and one-third of arable land produces feed for livestock. When America withdrew in 2001 President Bush calling it ‘a flawed treaty’. Flawed it is but perhaps not in the way the president meant. Pessimists reckon that even a fully implemented Kyoto protocol would be lucky to reduce the increase of global warming by 0.3 degrees centigrade by the middle of the twenty-first century.