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"Bush G-8 Summit Hot Air"
In hot seat, Bush unveils new climate strategy
Proposals still leave him distant from Europe ahead of G8 summit
 | President Bush visits a Washington, D.C., service station May 25 that added a hydrogen pump for the small test fleet operated in the area by carmakers. His climate strategy has focused on technology solutions. European allies, on the other hand, want a U.S. pledge to curb emissions via regulatory actions. |
WASHINGTON - Accused of dragging his feet on global warming, President Bush on Thursday proposed talks among the countries that emit the most greenhouse gases — a strategy that critics immediately labeled as counterproductive since a process already exists for international climate talks.
“The United States takes this issue seriously,” Bush said in a speech. “The new initiative I’m outlining today will contribute to the important dialogue that will take place in Germany next week.”
Bush called for a meeting this fall of 15 countries identified as major emitters. This list would include the United States, China, India and major European countries.
Bush's proposal is separate from U.N.-brokered climate talks already set for December in Bali, Indonesia.
The U.S. strategy also calls for cutting tariff barriers to sharing environmental technology and for a consensus by the end of 2008 on long-term goals for reducing the greenhouse gases tied to global warming.
But environmental and liberal groups were quick to criticize the proposals.
“The only way you can get a grip on carbon emissions is to cap and trade them globally. Bush has rejected that, so there are fundamental contradictions in these declarations,” said Greenpeace climate expert Charlie Kronick.
Added Kit Vaughan, a climate expert with the World Wildlife Fund: “This is trying to leapfrog next week's summit and the Bali meeting by aiming at the end of 2008. We don't have time for this. There are lives being lost. It is morally unacceptable.”
Phil Clapp, head of the National Environmental Trust, also questioned the timing. “The White House is just trying to hide the fact that the president is completely isolated among the G8 leaders by calling vaguely for some agreement next year, right before he leaves office,” he said.
The liberal Center for American Progress called it a “do-nothing” policy.
“Our allies’ pleas for action add to the voices of many big corporations such as Dow, Shell, General Electric and General Motors,” said Daniel Weiss, the group’s climate strategy director. “These and other Fortune 500 companies endorsed a 60 percent to 80 percent reduction in global warming pollution by 2050, the level scientists indicate that we must reach to stave off the worst impacts. Unfortunately, these appeals from his foreign and corporate allies continue to fall on President Bush’s deaf ears.”
Germany's 'two-degree' target
Bush has been under pressure from European allies to give ground on climate change at next week's meeting of the world's richest countries, but the latest proposals aren't likely to produce a breakthrough.
The sticking point is Bush's longstanding opposition to measurable goals for reducing emissions unless China and India also make those commitments.
Germany, which holds the European Union and Group of Eight presidencies, is proposing a so-called “two-degree” target, whereby global temperatures would be allowed to increase no more than 2 degrees Celsius — the equivalent of 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit — before being brought back down. Practically, experts have said that means a global reduction in emissions of 50 percent below 1990 levels by 2050.
The United States has rejected that approach.
James Connaughton, chairman of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, said the United States is not against setting goals but prefers to focus them on specific sectors, such as cleaner coal and reducing dependence on gasoline. “The U.S. has different sets of targets,” he said.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who is hosting the Group of Eight summit on June 6-8, has made fighting climate change the top issue at the annual event.
Combating global warming is also a concern for new French President Nicolas Sarkozy, with whom Bush wants to forge a good relationship, and for outgoing British Prime Minister Tony Blair, a close friend to Bush and an ally in the Iraq war.
U.S. objects to draft
As negotiators try to hammer out the final language in a G8 communique, the United States has blocked an emerging consensus in favor of firm targets. It is unclear whether a last-minute compromise can be reached.
"I think that there is considerable pressure coming from the Europeans for some type of American concessions on the issue of climate change," said Charles Kupchan, professor of international relations at Georgetown University.
"Setting aside Iraq, if there is one issue that creates resentment, it is the sense that the United States is contributing callously, more than any other country, to global warming," Kupchan said.
White House spokesman Tony Snow has said he expects the United States to play a leadership role and emphasized initiatives Bush has already unveiled, including his goal of reducing U.S. gasoline consumption by 20 percent over the next decade.
Acknowledging that climate change exists and must be addressed, Snow told reporters earlier this week that "we believe the most effective way is to go aggressively after technologies that are going to mitigate the problem."
Grant Aldonas, former undersecretary for international trade at the U.S. Commerce Department and now with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said that while Washington is seen as the G8 summit's "odd man out" on global warming, Bush is used to that.
"I don't think at this stage, having taken the sort of opprobrium of the international community over Kyoto, that the president is going agree to numerical targets at all," he predicted.
The Kyoto Protocol is a U.N.-brokered international pact to cut climate warming emissions, which the Bush administration rejects as a threat to the U.S. economy. China and India were not bound by Kyoto because they are developing nations.
Bush, Blair talk climate
Still, there has been a clear rhetorical shift at the White House which now acknowledges that climate change is a concern.
Meeting this month with Blair, Bush went out of his way to mention that they spent "a lot of time" discussing climate change. He said the United States wanted to help solve what he called a serious issue.
"I think the president actually has been convinced by the science," Aldonas said. He and other analysts said Bush is now facing new domestic pressures to act on climate change.
Annie Petsonk, international counsel for the green group Environmental Defense said G8 negotiators were emerging from a "fog of diplomacy" to realize that the White House position on climate change was not necessarily shared by Congress, the U.S. courts or the American people.
"The fact that Congress is now moving ahead to consider cap and trade legislation (to curb climate-warming emissions) and the U.S. states ... have taken the lead on this issue, they are showing the rest of the world that there is more to America's position on global warming than the administration's 'Just say no' approach," Petsonk said.
What is the Kyoto treaty?
Drawn up in Kyoto, Japan, in 1997, the agreement needs to be ratified by countries who were responsible for at least 55% of the world's carbon emissions in 1990 to come into force.
The agreement was dealt a severe blow in March 2001 when President George W Bush announced that the United States would never sign it.
KEY POINTS Finance - funding for poor countries to develop new technology Mechanisms - tough systems in each country to verify and report carbon emissions Sinks - heavily forested countries can use their 'tree sinks' to offset greenhouse gases Compliance - countries that fail to keep to their greenhouse gas reduction targets should face legally binding consequences |
If and when the revised treaty takes effect in 2008, it will require all signatories, including 39 industrialised countries, to achieve different emission reduction targets.
With that aim, it will provide a complex system which will allow some countries to buy emission credits from others.
For instance, a country in western Europe might decide to buy rights or credits to emit carbon from one in eastern Europe which could not afford the fuel that would emit the carbon in the first place.
Bonn compromises
The US produced 36% of emissions in 1990, making it the world's biggest polluter.
The revised Kyoto agreement, widely credited to the European Union, made considerable compromises allowing countries like Russia to offset their targets with carbon sinks - areas of forest and farmland which absorb carbon through photosynthesis.
The Bonn agreement also reduced cuts to be made to emissions of six gases believed to be exacerbating global warming - from the original treaty's 5.2% to 2%.
It was hoped that these slightly watered down provisions would allow the US to take up the Kyoto principles - but this has not proved to be the case.
That climate change or "global warming" is to some extent man made is now universally accepted. That reduction in carbon dioxide emissions will mitigate such "global warming" is also now universally accepted. The Kyoto Treaty, in my opinion, is a fair and practical way to reduce carbon dioxide emissions on the international level within a reasonable time frame. It is fair in the sense that those nations that are the worst pollutants are also the most regulated.
Enter the Bush Administration with it's refusal to enter the Kyoto Treaty on the grounds that the American economy would suffer, which in my mind begs the question, if lost American jobs is a concern of the Bush Administration then why are so many good American jobs being allowed to go overseas to countries like India and China (which countries are exempt from Kyoto Treaty regulations as "developing countries")? To me at least, this proves the Bush Administration really isn't concerned about lost American jobs, only lost CEO bonuses and stock options. The United States of America should enter the Kyoto Treaty, stop the flow of American jobs overseas through stiff job export tariffs and let the "fat cat" industry CEO's take a pay cut!
President Bush's plan to reduce this nation's carbon dioxide emissions through alternative sources of energy is a good one only in tandem with compliance to Kyoto Treaty regulations. Otherwise his plan is just so much "hot air", hastening the day of cataclysmic "global warming" change!
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