[Dialogue] Bush Kills Off Hopes for G8 Climate Change Plan

[Harry Wainwright]

Published on Friday, June 1, 2007 by the Guardian/UK
<http://www.guardian.co.uk/frontpage/story/0,,2093021,00.html>  

Bush Kills Off Hopes for G8 Climate Change Plan

by Julian Borger / David Adam / Suzanne Goldenberg

WASHINGTON - George Bush yesterday threw international efforts to control
climate change into confusion with a proposal to create a "new global
framework" to curb greenhouse gas emissions as an alternative to a planned
UN process.

The proposal came less than a week before a G8 summit in Germany and
appeared to hit European hopes that the world's industrialized nations would
commit to halving their emissions by 2050.
<http://www.commondreams.org/archive/wp-content/photos/0601_06.jpg> 

A UN-brokered meeting in Bali in December, at which it had been hoped to
agree to keep climate change to a 2C increase in temperature, is supposed to
provide a successor to the Kyoto protocol. All that was thrown in doubt by
the initiative announced yesterday by President Bush.

"By the end of next year, America and other nations will set a long-term
global goal for reducing greenhouse gases. To help develop this goal, the
United States would convene a series of meetings of nations that produced
most greenhouse gas emissions, including nations with rapidly growing
economies like India and China," Mr. Bush said.

Under the Bush proposal, the 15 countries responsible for the overwhelming
bulk of greenhouse gas emissions would meet in the autumn with the aim of
striking a deal by the end of next year. But it was unclear how this new
grouping would be able to agree on a scheme so rapidly, when there are such
pronounced differences within the smaller G8, largely between the US and its
partners.

British and German officials have stressed in recent weeks that a new
climate agreement should be based on binding caps on carbon pollution for
developed nations, similar to those set up under the UN's Kyoto protocol.
President Bush has consistently opposed such restrictions, which he argues
would damage the US economy. He prefers voluntary targets and his
administration is keen to measure the carbon intensity of polluting
activities - a measure of their efficiency - rather than tot up their
overall emissions.

Yesterday's announcement contained only a reference to an unspecified
long-term goal.

Tony Blair hailed the Bush initiative as an important step forward. "For the
first time America's saying it wants to be part of a global deal," the prime
minister told Sky News while on a tour of South Africa. "For the first time
it's setting its own domestic targets. For the first time it's saying it
wants a global target for the reduction of emissions, and therefore for the
first time I think [there is] the opportunity for a proper global deal."

Angela Merkel, the German chancellor and host of next week's G8 summit, also
welcomed the initiative. "I think it is positive, and the US president's
speech makes it clear that no one can avoid the question of global warming
any more," Ms Merkel said of the proposal. "This is common ground on which
to act."

However, Bernd Pfaffenbach, the chief German negotiator or "sherpa" on
climate change was blunter. He told the Suddeutschen Zeitung newspaper that
excluding the UN or weakening its role was a "red line" that Ms Merkel "will
never cross".

"The leading role of the UN on climate change is non-negotiable," he added.
Another German official described the proposal as a "poison pill" aimed at
undermining G8 and UN efforts to tackle global warming. "With one stroke you
say goodbye to the UN," the official said. "This is a fundamentally
different approach, and I'd be very surprised if the other G8 countries
abandon the UN course."

Environmentalists were also furious. Daniel Mittler, an analyst at
Greenpeace International, said: "It's not even too little too late, but a
dangerous diversionary tactic. He doesn't need to start a new process. There
already is one. This is meant to slow down the UN process."

The Bush administration moved to dispel the impression that it was an
attempt to undermine Europe's position on climate change, or that it
represented a transatlantic breach. Jim Connaughton, the former energy
lobbyist who heads the Council on Environmental Quality at the White House
and is lead negotiator on climate change, claimed that the process the
president was advocating was not intended to undercut the influence of the
Bali climate conference. "It will run in parallel and reinforce Bali," Mr.
Connaughton said.

However, he was critical of using emission caps or setting temperature
control, the main instruments of Europe's approach, and repeated
Washington's opposition to the European goal of limiting climate change to
2C. "We don't think that's a very practical approach," he said. "You can't
manage the temperature."

Coming days after the Bush administration's opposition to the 2C goal became
public, the new proposal has all but killed off hopes of an agreement on
basic principles for combating climate change at the G8 meeting. German
officials had hoped the gaps could be narrowed in a meeting between Ms
Merkel and Mr. Bush on Wednesday but in yesterday's speech the US president
appeared to commit himself to an alternative course.

European hopes that the US establishment was now convinced that combating
climate change was an urgent global task were also knocked yesterday when
the chief of the US space agency said global warming was not an issue of
pressing concern. "I have no doubt that a trend of global warming exists,"
Michael Griffin of NASA told a radio station. "I am not sure that it is fair
to say that it is a problem we must wrestle with."

C Guardian News and Media Limited 2007

Article printed from www.CommonDreams.org 

URL to article: http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/06/01/1606/

 

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