What Putin really thought came out after his non-ratification brought outraged complaints and accusations that Russia had lost an opportunity. He pushed back at critics with his suggestions that global warming was not so bad if you come from Siberia. He noted that "Russia is a northern country, so if it warms up two or three degrees, it's not terrible."
If any Kyoto supporter was misled by Putin into thinking Russia is just playing for time before it ratifies, his chief economic adviser emphasized at the Moscow conference that this was not the case. Andrei Illarionov declared it is necessary to balance costs against benefits, noting that the U.S. and Australia calculate "they cannot bear the economic consequences of ratifying the Kyoto Protocol. If they aren't rich enough to deal with those questions, my question is whether Russia is much richer than the U.S. or Australia."
The Russian scientists were even more resolute. Yuri Izrael, Putin's most influential science adviser, declared: "All the scientific evidence seems to support the same general conclusions, that the Kyoto Protocol is overly expensive, ineffective and based on bad science."
Illarionov combined the economic and scientific factors in ways that Bush aides would do well to emulate: "The temperature of the atmosphere is not rising. . . . For 30 years, diametrically opposite tendencies developed. . . . If we are to double GDP within the next 10 years, this will require an average economic growth rate of 7.2 percent. . . . No country in the world can double its GDP with a lower increase in carbon dioxide omissions or with no increase at all."
This is even stronger than Vladimir Putin's cracks about fur coats. It means George W. Bush will not be faced with a global mandate to undermine the American economy in quest of environmental purity. Maybe the American president really saw something in 2001 when he gazed into the soul of his Russian counterpart.