By Richard Ingham, Agence France-Presse

Supporters of the Kyoto Protocol were gleeful on Saturday after Australian elections left the United States in the wilderness as the only major economy to boycott the UN’s climate pact.

The ouster of Prime Minister John Howard stripped President George W. Bush of a key ally barely a week before a conference in Bali, Indonesia, on the world’s response to climate change beyond 2012, they said.

“It’s great news for the Kyoto Protocol,” Shane Rattenburg, Greenpeace’s political director, told AFP.

“It’s a very important event in the international climate debate, and for Bali. It will leave Bush and the United States more isolated.”

Industrialised countries that have signed and ratified the Protocol are required to meet targeted curbs in their greenhouse-gas emissions by 2012.

(Original Article)