Also see below:     
Australian PM Changes Stance on Greenhouse Gas Targets    [

    Bush Unveils New Climate Strategy
    MSNBC

    Thursday 31 May 2007

Proposals still leave him distant from Europe ahead of G8 summit.

    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.

    US 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.

 

---

    Go to Original

    Australian PM Changes Stance on Greenhouse Gas Targets
    The Associated Press

    Thursday 31 May 2007

    Canberra, Australia - Australia may have to commit to a long-term target to cut greenhouse gas pollution, Prime Minister John Howard said, an about-face likely prompted by a report received Thursday on carbon trading's impact on the economy.

    The government-commissioned report by 12 business leaders and senior bureaucrats will form the foundation of John Howard's response to climate change, which he will take to the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation leaders' forum to be held in Sydney in September.

    "One of the responsibilities of the APEC countries is to play their part in forging a pragmatic, sensible but effective response to the challenge of climate change," Howard said Thursday at a luncheon speech in honor of visiting Philippines President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo.

    "I see the APEC meeting in Sydney as an opportunity to make a further contribution to the development of a response by the nations of the Asia-Pacific region to the challenges of climate change," he added.

    He said unless all countries are involved, including the worst polluters - the United States and China - "a long-term, effective response and solution will not be available."

    Howard, who along with the United States refused to commit to Kyoto Protocol carbon emission reduction targets, has long rejected the need to set long-term targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

    But he used a speech to a mining industry dinner on Wednesday to reveal a significant change in his position.

    "We've got to take practical steps to position our own economy for a lower-emissions future," Howard said in a speech in Parliament House.

    "If we do move toward an emissions trading system, that will of necessity involve a long-term target of some kind," he added. "But it must be a target of which we know the consequences."

    Howard said the report he received Thursday, which has not yet been made public, would help the government calculate the impact on the economy of placing a price on carbon emissions.

    He ridiculed the opposition Labor Party over its promise to reduce Australian gas emissions 20 percent by 2020 and 60 percent by 2050 if it wins elections due late this year.

    Howard told Parliament he wondered if Labor's environment spokesman, former rock star Peter Garrett, "has any idea of what that would do to the Australian economy."

    Labor Leader Kevin Rudd accused Howard of preventing Australia, the world's worst greenhouse gas polluter per capita, from developing a carbon trading scheme during his 11 years in government.

    Howard denied that his government had done nothing to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.