With US out of Paris treaty, can we revisit Kyoto?

US President Donald Trump pulled his country out of the Paris climate change agreement last month. His move generated a lot of heat in political, diplomatic and media circles - and most of the reactions were extremely critical. Trump's international isolation was obvious then and became almost physically evident at the just-concluded G20 summit in Hamburg, Germany.

The Paris Agreement is not binding; in other words, it contains commitments on emission cuts and, mostly on the part of developed nations, funding for developing or less developed countries meant to facilitate access to green technologies, which should be undertaken on a voluntary basis.

Besides, the Paris Agreement does not fully honor the Kyoto Protocol and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, which enshrined two important principles in global climate negotiations: historic responsibility (and related to it the idea of emission space for developing and less developed countries) and the idea that developed countries had to undertake binding obligations.