[Mb-civic] World Leaders to Discuss Strategies for Climate Control - Washington Post

[William Swiggard]

> World Leaders to Discuss Strategies for Climate Control
> Bush Administration Shuns Conference On Strategies to Build on Kyoto Pact
>
> By Juliet Eilperin
> Washington Post Staff Writer
> Sunday, November 27, 2005; A03
>
> The nations of the world will meet in Montreal this week to start 
> discussing the next step in combating the global warming problem, 
> hoping to devise a successor to the Kyoto Protocol that was scorned by 
> the Bush administration in 2001. But the United States is saying it 
> doesn't want to talk.
>
> Despite the Bush administration's resistance, an assortment of U.S. 
> elected officials, industry representatives and environmentalists are 
> pushing to chart a new climate change strategy that will bring the 
> United States back into international discussions while forcing 
> developing countries to make meaningful cuts in their own carbon 
> dioxide emissions. This push for a more flexible approach than Kyoto 
> provided will be on full display in Montreal and could frame how the 
> world confronts climate change in the years to come.
>
> "Most people are ready to take the dialogue forward. The only place 
> where that is not the case is the administration," said Eileen 
> Claussen, president of the Pew Center on Global Climate Change. Many 
> advocates, analysts and policymakers are willing to move beyond the 
> "one size fits all" approach of Kyoto, she added.
>
> Climate experts such as Claussen are grappling with how best to 
> proceed after 2012, when Kyoto -- which set a goal of cutting 
> heat-trapping gases by 7 percent below 1990 levels by then -- expires. 
> Scientists such as Princeton University's Michael Oppenheimer believe 
> the world is in the middle of "the critical decade" in terms of 
> curbing greenhouse gas emissions and needs to lock in carbon dioxide 
> cuts soon before the warming trend has irreversible consequences.
>
> "We do have a little time, but not much. . . . If we don't get a 
> serious program in place for the long term in this second post-Kyoto 
> phase, we will simply not make it and we will be crossing limits which 
> will basically produce impacts that are unacceptable," Oppenheimer 
> told reporters in a telephone conference call this month.
>
> Starting tomorrow and continuing until Dec. 9, two overlapping groups 
> will be meeting in Montreal: the 156 countries that signed Kyoto, 
> which include every industrialized nation except the United States and 
> Australia; and the 189 signatories to the 1992 U.N. Framework 
> Convention on Climate Change, a pact without binding emissions limits 
> that the United States and Australia have both endorsed.
>
> Negotiators are hoping to have talks about a post-Kyoto climate 
> strategy under the auspices of the U.N. Framework Convention, the 
> broader coalition. But Paula J. Dobriansky, the undersecretary of 
> state for democracy and global affairs, said the United States would 
> prefer that each country to pursue its own way of curbing harmful 
> emissions.
>
> "We don't see the commencement of a negotiation process as 
> contributing to progress now . . . given the differing positions held 
> by parties to the Framework Convention on Climate Change," she said. 
> "One of the best ways forward is to allow for the development of 
> different approaches."
>
> The Bush administration has spent $20 billion on climate change 
> programs since taking office, Dobriansky added, and cut greenhouse gas 
> emissions by 0.8 percent between 2000 and 2003. "The United States is 
> taking leadership here," she said, adding that it also is engaged in 
> bilateral and regional climate talks.
>
> Environmentalists are pressing negotiators in Montreal to begin 
> sketching out a future climate strategy without the United States, 
> leaving room for it to come aboard later. David Doniger, Climate 
> Center policy director at the Natural Resources Defense Council, 
> compared it to the launching of a ship in which other negotiators 
> "want to reserve a stateroom" for the United States: "They would make 
> a big mistake if they waited for the U.S. to get aboard."
>
> Sharon Lee Smith, director general for policy at Environment Canada 
> and one of the nation's lead delegates, said organizers want as many 
> countries as possible to engage in post-Kyoto talks but will proceed 
> even without the United States.
>
> "There is a view Montreal is the time to talk about the future in more 
> detail," Smith said. "We'll be pushing ahead."
>
> Some advocates are trying to jump-start the process by outlining a 
> different approach to cutting carbon dioxide emissions than is spelled 
> out in Kyoto. Earlier this month the Pew Center joined with the World 
> Economic Forum, a Geneva-based group of international business and 
> political leaders, in releasing a novel plan based on 18 months of 
> discussions with policymakers, industry officials and environmental 
> activists from around the world. This proposal would seek to have each 
> industrial sector agree on a global emissions limit and require 
> developing nations to commit to a specific target for increasing 
> reliance on renewable energy sources, either collectively or individually.
>
> "We were trying to come up with something that was meaningful but with 
> maximum flexibility," Claussen said.
>
> The two top senators on the Foreign Relations Committee, Richard G. 
> Lugar (R-Ind.) and Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.), have endorsed the Pew 
> proposal and introduced a resolution calling for the United States to 
> take a more active role in climate negotiations.
>
> "It's critical that the international dialogue on climate change and 
> American participation in those discussions move beyond the disputes 
> over the Kyoto Protocols," Lugar said.
>
> Several political leaders on the state and local levels are also 
> pushing for more aggressive action.
>
> Democratic Govs. Janet Napolitano (Ariz.) and Bill Richardson (N.M.) 
> have agreed on a regional climate pact to try to cut greenhouse gas 
> emissions. Nine Northeastern states are hoping to launch a carbon 
> dioxide emissions trading system next month, and California, Oregon 
> and Washington are discussing a similar venture to lower the region's 
> contribution. Mayors of 188 cities have pledged to cut their 
> greenhouse gas emissions by about 7 percent; Salt Lake City is 
> three-quarters of the way there.
>
> "We're not waiting for the Congress or the administration to set 
> policy because there's such a leadership vacuum," said Richardson, who 
> will attend the Montreal talks or send a delegate. "States are going 
> to take matters in their own hands. This is a serious problem that 
> requires immediate action."
>
> Many major U.S. companies are also responding to Kyoto. Pharmaceutical 
> giant Johnson & Johnson pledged two years ago to cut its 1990 
> greenhouse gas emissions by 7 percent by 2010. So far it has cut them 
> 3.1 percent despite growing fourfold in size during that period.
>
> "We feel climate change is very real," said Johnson & Johnson 
> executive director of energy management Dennis Canavan, who will 
> attend the Montreal talks unofficially. "We want to make sure we 
> minimize our impact on that."
>
> At the same time, some developing countries that had resisted the idea 
> of greenhouse gas limits have been showing a greater willingness to 
> participate in climate talks. Brazil plans to announce in Montreal 
> that it reduced its rate of deforestation by 40 percent between August 
> 2004 and August 2005, according to several sources, which is 
> significant because deforestation accounts for 80 percent of the 
> country's greenhouse gas emissions. Other developing nations, such as 
> Mexico, have suggested they are more open to adopting emission curbs.
>
> Michael Zammit Cutajar, Malta's ambassador for international 
> environmental affairs who helped oversee global climate accords 
> between 1992 and 2002, said developing countries "are prepared to look 
> beyond their current situation as well," provided they get a positive 
> signal from industrialized nations.
>
> This kind of analysis worries Kyoto critics such as Roy Spencer, a 
> research scientist at the University of Alabama at Huntsville who does 
> not believe the climate will warm as rapidly as many computer models 
> predict.
>
> "Asking people to cut their energy use is like asking people to stop 
> eating," said Spencer, who contributes to the free-market online 
> journal Tech Central Station, which is in part funded by oil companies 
> opposed to mandatory carbon limits. "The solution is in technology."
>

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/26/AR2005112600762.html
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