http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/1201-01.htm
Published on Monday,
December 1, 2003 by Reuters
U.S. Blasts U.N. Kyoto Pact as "Straitjacket"
by Christian Plumb
QUOTE:
"The White House delegates are coming to Milan to undermine
this treaty even though President (George W.) Bush pledged
not to block other countries from moving forward."
Jennifer Morgan, climate policy chief of the WWF
MILAN, Italy - The United States denounced on Monday the
U.N.'s Kyoto Protocol as an unrealistic "straitjacket"
for curbing global warming as officials from 180 nations
met in Italy to work out details of the landmark pact.
Washington, which pulled
out of Kyoto in 2001, said its own
policy of promoting "breakthrough technologies" for
energy
was the "only acceptable cost-effective option" to limit
gases
blamed for heating the planet and to raise living standards.
Kyoto is "an unrealistic
and ever-tightening regulatory
straitjacket, curtailing energy consumption," Paula Dobriansky,
U.S. Undersecretary of State for Global Affairs, wrote in the
Financial Times newspaper.
She said Kyoto exploited
existing technology to choke emissions
of gases like carbon dioxide from cars and factories at the
expense of world economic growth.
In Milan, meanwhile,
delegates met at the start of a 12-day effort
to breathe some life into the protocol, hanging by a thread after
Washington pulled out and Moscow backed away from promises to
ratify it.
Italy's Environment
Minister Altero Matteoli vowed to push on
with Kyoto, which cannot enter into force without backing either
from Moscow or Washington even though about 120 other nations
have signed up.
Uncertainty over Kyoto's
fate "should not reduce our commitment
and our work to reinforce global strategies to reduce greenhouse
gas emissions and adapt the planet's most vulnerable regions,"
he said.
HEAT, FLOODS
Kyoto aims to cut carbon
dioxide emissions by five percent
from 1990 levels by 2008-12 as a first step to limit rising
temperatures blamed for climate change and more frequent
floods, droughts, heat waves and storms.
But the U.N. body overseeing
the talks has warned that
industrialized nations' emissions could rise by eight
percent from 2000 until 2010 -- a 17 percent rise from
1990 levels.
Bureaucrats and scientists
will spend much of the
December 1-12 conference trying to set final details
of the Protocol.
Some 80 ministers are
due to attend the high-level portion
of the talks from December 10 with a speech by Prime Minister
Silvio Berlusconi -- accused of being timid in tackling
pollution by environmentalists in Italy.
Jennifer Morgan, climate
policy chief of the WWF environmental
group, accused Washington of sending a large delegation of
about 60 people to torpedo the talks.
"The White House
delegates are coming to Milan to undermine
this treaty even though President (George W.) Bush pledged
not to block other countries from moving forward," she said.
Dobriansky said Washington
spent $1.7 billion a year on climate
science and research, more than the rest of the world combined.
A key topic at the
Milan meeting will be how far forests
can be used to offset and absorb a country's greenhouse
gas emissions, as well as the question of what exactly
constitutes a forest.
A broad definition
-- say including rubber or other farms
with single tree species -- could be a boon to certain nations.
Environmentalists argue that diverse forests should be planted.
For Milan, Italy's
business capital which struggles with
chronic pollution, Monday's opening session emerged as a
crucial test of the city's sometimes feeble environmental
management as hundreds of bus, tram and subway operators
walked off the job.
Additional reporting
by Cristiano Corvino in Milan and
Alister Doyle in Oslo
Copyright 2003 Reuters
Ltd
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