I can't think of any differences. You have to reference the <html> tag on occaision though. For instance, if you want to set the height of the <body> element to 100% of the viewport, the <html> tag must also be set to 100%. That has to do with the shrink-to-fit height sizing algorithm specified in the CSS standards.
The :root psuedo-class isn't very useful in HTML because you *can* reference the <html> tag directly. Where it becomes useful, and the reason for it existing as far as I can tell, is in XML where the root element can be variable, and not always the same tag.
Hope that answers your question.
Regards,
Rich
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