US isolation 'non-sensical'
2005-12-13 14:54
Washington - Melting glaciers, the shrinking ice cap, warming oceans and rising sea levels - all are urgent concerns around the world, and cause for frustration among many nations that believe the United States has set a glacial pace toward reversing the onset of global warming.
Critics said the Bush administration's isolation at the United Nations-brokered international climate talks that ended last week in Montreal doesn't make much sense.
The White House acknowledged on Sunday that it holds "a different view" from most other nations, but said it is nonetheless providing global leadership on heat-trapping "greenhouse" gases.
More than 150 nations, including nearly every industrialised country except the US, agreed on Saturday to negotiate a second phase of mandatory cuts in greenhouse gas emissions.
Those include carbon dioxide, methane and other gases accumulating in the atmosphere from fossil-fuel burning.
Action needed
A 1997 treaty negotiated in Kyoto, Japan, covers the first phase through 2012, but the US, whose tailpipes and smokestacks are responsible for one-quarter of the world's greenhouse gases, won't participate.
Claussen said: "If you really want results, you have to do something that's mandatory. It's not going to happen with voluntary approaches."
White House spokesperson Dana Perino said the Bush administration favours voluntary efforts and bilateral and regional arrangements to tackle climate change, including $3bn (about R19bn) a year in US government spending on research and development of energy-saving technologies.
"If you only focus on debates about binding emissions caps, more specifically the Kyoto Protocol, then yes, we have a different view than the participants that have signed onto Kyoto," Perino said. "However, when you consider the real actions that will be needed to address the issue, there is no doubt that we are leading the world in a global and long-term effort."
'The administration failed'
Others see a different type of leadership. Alden Meyer, strategy and policy director for the Union of Concerned Scientists, said the Bush administration arrived in Montreal "determined to prevent the rest of the world from extending and deepening their commitments under Kyoto".
The administration failed, he said, because Europe, Canada, Russia and Japan "understand that mandatory limits on global warming pollution, combined with market-based emissions trading mechanisms, are essential. ... The Bush approach of relying solely on voluntary efforts and long-term R&D simply won't get the job done".
Only in the final hours of the Montreal talks did the US delegation, led by state department and White House officials, accept a weaker agreement to join a preliminary discussion on future steps to slow global warming, and then only on condition that it ruled out "negotiations leading to new commitment" to reduce greenhouse gases.
The Bush administration committed itself to slowing down the growth rate of those gases, not reversing the trend.
UN Climate Change Conference:
- AP