USA: U.S. Administration calls White House climate conference a good foundation for Bali meetings

U.S. Administration says White House Climate Conference sets the stage for deeper discussions in Bali. E.U. offers its plans to help solve climate crisis. Some of the world's biggest greenhouse polluters took aim at President George W. Bush on Friday (September 28), questioning his leadership on the problem of global warming. Bush, who convened the two-day meeting of the 17 biggest emitters of climate-warming gases, stressed new environmental technology and voluntary measures to tackle the issue. "We have rolled up our sleeves and really joined that debate and laid a foundation for the summaries of national actions which I don't know if you've got a copy of those yet but we'll make those available," said James Connaughton, head of the White House Council on Environmental Quality. "What you see as a commonality in all of these national plans is almost every nation now has a portfolio of measures that includes binding measures, be they regulations or other government requirements and it is on that foundation that we can have a more comfortable discussion and then the decisions and the mechanics of how those commitments are carried forward beyond 2012," he added. But Bush's rejection of mandatory limits on carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases that warm the planet is at odds with the 1997 Kyoto Protocol and with many who attended on Friday. The European Commission announced their plans for effecting change and measuring it. "What we have put on the table is two-fold. In the first place, an offer that we are prepared to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions by 30 percent by the year 2020 provided that other major emitters match and the developed countries do the same. And second, and perhaps at least as importantly, we have made a decision, not a commitment, it's a unilateral decision that we will, whatever comes out of the planned negotiation, reduce our CO2 emissions by 20 percent by 2020," said Mogens Peter Carl, European Commission Director General for the Environment. "Since we have lost a lot of time, there is a growing consciousness on behalf of all participants including us and I'm sure the United States itself, that we cannot allow ourselves to lose any more time. And of course we will be engaging ourselves fully with this administration through the remainder of 2007 and 2008," he added. Some critics have questioned whether the Bush administration was attempting to get around the U.N. climate process with its own set of meetings.

ITN Source | September 29, 2007

Tags:. .decisions. .debate. .process. .european. .biggest