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The Green Guide

U.S. Isolated as World Moves
on Climate Treaty

Published on Saturday, November 10, 2001 by Reuters
U.S. Isolated as World Moves on Climate Treaty
by Robin Pomeroy

MARRAKESH, Morocco - The first global multilateral talks since the
September 11 attacks ended in success on Saturday with most of the
world declaring it would push ahead with a major anti-pollution pact,
but the United States will not be joining the party.

If ever there's a reason to join the United States should do it now.
After the events of September 11, if there is any reason for the
United States to call for international, global approaches (it should
also) join a global approach to the existing global problem of climate
change.

Jan Pronk
Dutch Environment Minister
Eight months after President Bush shocked many U.S. allies by pulling
out of the Kyoto global warming treaty, the rest of the world
finalized the legal work which should let them bring it into force
without the planet's biggest polluter.

Bush's critics abroad saw that as evidence Washington, already
planning a strategic missile shield, was turning its back on the
concerns of the rest of the world.

The Kyoto pact aims to reduce gas emissions from factories and exhaust
pipes that many scientists say are gathering in the atmosphere
trapping heat -- the so-called greenhouse effect.

U.N. scientists predict the result could be an increase in average
temperatures by up to six degrees Celsius over the next 100 years,
leading to rising sea levels, and an increase in major floods and
droughts.

The events of September 11 led Bush to call on his allies for a global
coalition to fight terrorism. At the end of the two-week climate talks
in Marrakesh, many were calling for Bush to now rejoin what the global
fight against climate change.

REASON TO REJOIN KYOTO

``If ever there's a reason to join the United States should do it
now,'' said Dutch Environment Minister Jan Pronk, who chaired the
ill-fated Hague talks on climate change two years ago when the United
States was still a Kyoto participant.

``After the events of September 11, if there is any reason for the
United States to call for international, global approaches (it should
also) join a global approach to the existing global problem of climate
change,'' he told reporters.

``That would add to the credibility of any other approach which is
being sought by the United States seeking a global answer.''

The Marrakesh agreement sealed the legal text to govern how the treaty
works and, crucially, is meant to give enough legal certainty for
waverers like Russia and Japan to ratify it.

It commits the world's industrialized countries to cut their
greenhouse gas emissions, particularly carbon dioxide, by an average
of five percent of 1990 levels by 2012.

As Russia and Japan indicated that the Marrakesh deal should make
their ratification possible, Kyoto could come into force without the
United States by late 2002.

Canada said the fact that the world had agreed a workable Kyoto
rulebook showed its neighbor was wrong to opt out.

``Canada thinks the American position on Kyoto is wrong. The basic
difference between us is we believe we can succeed in achieving
climate change goals within the Kyoto process, the Americans believe
you can't,'' Canadian Environment Minister David Anderson said.

``What we've done (by agreeing acceptable rules) is we have shown our
original belief that the Americans are wrong is, in fact, accurate,''
he said.

NEW NORTH AMERICAN APPROACH

He added that he expected the U.S. to unveil a North American approach
to cutting greenhouse gases which Canada would probably participate in
alongside Kyoto.

``We'll be almost certainly the only country in the world in that
position. So we are very concerned to make sure that the American
system is compatible with Kyoto.''

The United States insists it will not return to Kyoto.

U.S. Under-Secretary of State for Global Affairs Paula Dobriansky said
her country was looking for a global solution to climate change, one
that would be a ``tapestry'' of national and regional measures, rather
than the single worldwide system provided by Kyoto.

``Our overall goal is the same (as that of the rest of the world),''
Dobriansky told reporters earlier in the week. ``We have a common
objective which is to address climate change and to seek reductions of
greenhouse gases.''

Environmental campaigners said the United States would now be forced
to make good on that promise, inside or outside Kyoto.

``The agreement, and the fact that countries will move to bring the
protocol into force, will send strong support to those in the United
States who want to push for action on climate change,'' Kate Hampton
of Friends of the Earth told reporters.

Jennifer Morgan of the World Wildlife Fund said that as the United
States had a great input during the years since Kyoto in helping draft
the rules agreed in Marrakesh, some believe a return should not be too
painful.

Many U.S. companies would be pressing for the right to participate in
any future emissions trading market that is likely to develop under
the Kyoto rules, she said.

``This agreement includes many of the elements the U.S. has been
asking for over the years. It is an agreement that the Bush
administration should embrace and come in to.'' Morgan said.