PARIS, April 17: A US plan to cap greenhouse gases by 2025 was dismissed as too little, too late by some delegates at 17-nation climate talks in Paris on Thursday while others welcomed it as a first firm U.S. emissions ceiling.
On Wednesday, US President George Bush unveiled a plan to halt the growth of US emissions by 2025, toughening a previous goal of braking the growth of emissions by 2012. The United States and China are the top emitters.
“The president gave a disappointing speech,” German Environment Minister Sigmar Gabriel said in a statement issued in Berlin headlined “Gabriel criticises Bush’s Neanderthal speech. Losership, not Leadership”.
Many delegates at the US-led climate talks, on Thursday and Friday in Paris, said far faster action was needed to avert the worst effects of global warming. Most other developed nations are trying to cut emissions below 1990 levels.
“President Bush recognised the need for mandatory federal legislation to tackle climate change but what he proposed ... will not contribute to the effective tackling of climate change,” European Environment Commis-sioner Stavros Dimas said. “The American administration is starting to awake,” French climate change ambassador Brice Lalonde said. “It’s a bit late”.
Bush will step down in January 2009 and Republican presidential candidate John McCain and Democratic hopefuls Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have all urged tougher caps on emissions than those proposed by Bush.
“We are looking forward to whoever succeeds the present (US) administration, because we believe we can probably only do better,” South African Environ-mental Affairs Minister Marthi-nus van Schalkwyk told reporters.
RISING SEAS: Projections by the UN Climate Panel indicate emissions by rich nations will have to fall by 25 to 40 per cent below 1990 levels by 2020 to avert the worst effects of more droughts, heatwaves, floods and rising seas.
“That’s the most extreme curve,” said James Connaugh-ton, chairman of the White House Council on Environmen-tal Quality. He said there were other, less demanding scientific scenarios for addressing global warming.
“We try to steer away from rhetorical commitments that have no prayer of being met,” he told a news conference. Previous US data have suggested US emissions could rise to about 30 per ent above 1990 levels by 2025.
The Paris talks involve the United States, France, Germany, Italy, Britain, Japan, China, Canada, India, Brazil, South Korea, Mexico, Russia, Australia, Indonesia and South Africa.
The European Commission, current European Union president Slovenia and the United Nations are also attending.
The big economies account for 80 per cent of world greenhouse gas emissions and Paris is the third meeting of a series begun in September 2007 to work out ways to contribute to a new UN treaty to succeed the Kyoto Protocol beyond 2012.
Delegates are also examining the idea of a long-term aspirational goal of cutting world emissions by perhaps 50 per cent by 2050. Connaughton said Wash-ington had not given up on a 2007 promise to seriously consider such a target.
The United Nations noted the UN Climate Panel reckoned world emissions will have to peak in 10 to 15 years to avert the worst effects of warming — before Bush’s ceiling. “It’s good to have something on the table,” Yvo de Boer, head of the UN Climate Change Secretariat, said of Bush’s plan.
“The science tells us we need to peak emissions in the next 10 to 15 years and then reduce them by half by the middle of the century. ... So this [the US plan] needs to be considered in that context,” he said.
—Reuters
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