The Kyoto Protocol to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change – Kyoto Protocol – is a significant attempt at multilateral cooperation to deal with what is considered to be a major threat to global climatic constancy and stability.  The movement away from climatic constancy represented by global warming has the potential to impose huge costs on the global economy because much physical infrastructure including productive capacity is designed to operate within surprisingly tight climatic norms and a considerable proportion of human habitation is based on current ocean mass.  In the latter case, rising ocean levels could force large-scale relocation of people and widespread abandonment of valuable coastal urban infrastructure.  Increased instability in weather patterns and weather intensity can lead to large losses for agricultural production and costly increases in safety tolerances for infrastructure.  While very large, these costs will be incurred, for the most part, in the distant future.