NUSA DUA/WASHINGTON, 7 December 2007 — The United Nations praised yesterday a step by a US Senate committee to cut greenhouse gas emissions in the world’s top carbon emitter even as Washington reaffirmed opposition to caps.
“That’s a very encouraging sign from the United States,” Yvo de Boer, head of the UN Climate Change Secretariat, said at 190-nation UN talks in Bali, Indonesia, of a vote by the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.
His comments rubbed in the isolation of President George W. Bush’s administration at the Dec. 3-14 talks. Australia’s new government ratified the Kyoto Protocol on Monday, leaving the United States as the only developed nation outside the pact.
Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has also offered to act as a bridge on climate change between China and the West, a Rudd spokeswoman said yesterday.
China is poised to become the world’s top carbon emitter and is not bound by any emissions caps under the Kyoto Protocol. Getting China, which is already pursuing energy efficiency targets for its booming economy, to join a broader climate pact is regarded as crucial by Bali delegates as nations prepare for rising seas, melting glaciers, severe storms and water shortages.
In Washington, the Senate committee voted 11-8 on Wednesday for legislation outlining a cap-and-trade system for industry, power generators and transport. The bill is headed for debate in the full Senate.
The Senate Committee’s vote sets up a contentious debate in Congress over climate change that could have an impact on the presidential and congressional elections.
Despite the pressure, the Bush administration stood firm yesterday in its refusal to sign the agreement, with Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns, the No. 3 American diplomat, reiterating its stance in a series of appearances and interviews in Australia.
“We do not see eye-to-eye with Australia or many other countries on the signing of Kyoto, that’s obvious,” Burns said in Sydney. “But we do agree that it is critical, it is vital that we try to agree on a post-Kyoto global regime to reduce carbon emissions.”
The Bush administration now finds itself in both a national and international battle. The bill passed on the Hill would have the United States cut gas emissions by 70 percent by 2050 from electric power plants, manufacturing and transportation. The bill now goes to the full Senate.
The bill would set caps on US greenhouse gas emissions from electric utility, transportation and manufacturing industries beginning in 2012 with the goal of cutting emissions 60 percent by 2050. It would create an incentive system that would give credits to industries that cut pollution. Industries that failed to reduce emissions would be forced to buy credits from others.
The Democratic-led Senate Committee voted largely along party lines to send the measure to the full Senate for what supporters hope will be action early next year. “We are facing a crisis that will hit our children and our grandchildren the hardest if we do not act now. Not to act would be wrong, cowardly, and irresponsible,” said Sen. Barbara Boxer, a California Democrat, chairwoman of the committee. “It will not alter our position here,” US chief climate negotiator Harlan Watson told reporters in Bali of the vote.
Watson said Washington was pushing ahead with its own track by inviting big economies to Honolulu, Hawaii, next month for climate change talks after a first Washington meeting in September. He said he believed the dates were Jan. 29 and 30.
Bush wants 17 big emitters, accounting for more than 80 percent of world greenhouse gases, to agree to new climate goals by the end of 2008 — just before Bush leaves office — and feed into a new UN pact meant to be agreed by the end of 2009.
Delegates in Bali are seeking ways to bind all nations more tightly into a fight against climate change. But China, India and other developing nations say rich countries must commit to deep emissions cuts first.
More than 200 climate scientists from around the world urged nations at the Bali talks to make deeper and swifter cuts to greenhouse emissions, mainly from burning fossil fuels.
They said governments had a window of only 10-15 years for global emissions to peak and decline, and that the ultimate goal should be at least a 50 percent reduction in climate-warming emissions by 2050..
— Additional input from Reuters
