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US nears agreement to join climate talks
(AP)
Updated: 2005-12-10 14:31 Clinton's vice president, Al Gore, was instrumental in negotiating the treaty
protocol initialed in 1997 in Kyoto, Japan 錕斤拷 a pact that the Senate subsequently
refused to ratify. When Bush, taking office, rejected Kyoto outright, he
complained that China, India and other major industrializing countries were not
bound by its emission controls.
The protocol's language required its member nations at this point to begin
talks on presumably deeper emissions cuts for the next phase, after 2012.
Negotiations among the more than 150 nations that ratified Kyoto went on
until dawn Friday and then resumed later in the day, as they hammered out final
details of a plan whereby a working group would begin developing post-2012
proposals. The tentative document included no deadline for that work, but said
it should be completed early enough to ensure that no gap develops after 2012.
Rubber ducks from environmental group National
Environmental Trust are handed out to delegates in response to comments by
U.S. chief negotiator Harlan Watson during The United Nations Climate
Change Conference in Montreal December 9, 2005. Watson, who left
negotiation talks overnight, was quoted as saying 'If it looks like a
duck, quacks like a duck, walks like a duck then it is a duck.'
[Reuters] | That would guarantee an uninterrupted future for the burgeoning international
"carbon market," in which carbon reductions achieved by one company can be sold
to another to help it meet its target.
At the same time, the host Canadians tried to draw in the Americans, Kyoto
outsiders, on a parallel track, under the nonbinding 1992 U.N. climate treaty.
Canada's proposals offered vague, noncommittal language by which Washington
would join only in a "dialogue" to "explore" cooperative action.
U.S. negotiators repeatedly rejected these efforts, though remaining in
discussion with Canada's environment minister, Stephane Dion, president of the
conference.
The Americans also repeatedly pointed to $3-billion-a-year U.S. government
spending on research and development of energy-saving technologies as a
demonstration of U.S. efforts to combat climate change.
In a news conference after his speech, Clinton suggested the Europeans and
others not force "targets" on Washington, but look for agreement on specific
energy-saving projects.
"If we just keep working with the administration, we'll find some specific
things we can do that are consistent with the targets," he said, but "without
embracing the targets."
Most of the conference was devoted to the nuts-and-bolts work of the climate
pacts.
Environmentalists were pleased at agreements in such areas as how to quantify
gas emissions and how to penalize nations that do not meet Kyoto targets.
Others expressed disappointment, meanwhile, there was not more progress here
in such areas as helping finance developing countries' adaptation to damaging
climate change.
As for the U.S. position, many here seemed resigned to waiting for a
political change in Washington.
"It's such a pity the United States is still very much unwilling to join the
international community, to have a multilateral effort to deal with climate
change," said the leader of the African group of nations here, Kenya's Emily
Ojoo Massawa.
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