Climate change summit ends with 'more talks' plan

A United Nations conference ended today with a vague plan for informal new talks on how to slow global warming, but without a US commitment to multilateral negotiations on next steps, including emissions controls.

“The Americans reached a good agreement with the Europeans,” Argentine diplomat Raul Estrada Oyuela said of the plan, which he helped broker in long hours of late-night talks in Buenos Aires.

Others described it as at best a small step to keep the multilateral process moving on climate change. “It’s a finger-hold, like hanging on by your nails,” said Michael Zammit Cutajar of Malta, a veteran climate negotiator.

European and other delegates to the annual climate conference wanted to begin discussions about what would follow the Kyoto Protocol when it expires in 2012. That pact, which takes effect on February 16, requires most industrial nations to make specified cuts in emissions of carbon dioxide and other “greenhouse gases” blamed for global warming.

The Bush administration has rejected the 1997 Kyoto pact and its pre-2012 mandates, saying they would damage the US economy. In Buenos Aires, the United States also resisted efforts to schedule diplomatic “seminars” in 2005 to explore ways to control emissions after 2012, calling such talks “premature”.

The Americans sought to focus attention instead on long-range US programmes to develop cleaner-burning energy technologies – not on the idea of immediate, mandatory emissions reductions.

“A sustained effort over many generations will be required,” said US delegation chief Paula Dobriansky, an undersecretary of state.

Late-night bargaining as the two-week meeting wound down produced an agreement for a single seminar next May at which diplomats can informally “exchange information” on whatever subject they choose: emissions reductions, energy research, ways to adapt to a changing climate, among others.

Although they failed to get an American commitment to talk about reductions, the Europeans viewed the deal as a start, possibly spurring talks with developing nations, such as China and India, about post-2012 steps to help the climate. Such poorer nations are exempt under Kyoto.

Environmentalists and many delegates viewed the position of the United States, the world’s biggest emitter, as irresponsible.

“They’re trying everything possible to discredit any dialogue that would impact on certain economic interests,” Tuvalu delegate Enele Sopoaga said, referring to the oil and coal industries.

His Pacific nation of small scattered islands is already losing precious land to rising seas – one consequence scientists predict with global warming.

The Kyoto Protocol itself requires member nations to open negotiations before 2006 on next steps after 2012. Environmentalists and delegates feared that if the Americans were not brought back into the process by next year, the long-term brunt of fighting climate change would remain with the Europeans, Japan and Canada.

That, some worried, might eventually unravel even the fragmented global effort to put mandatory restraints on emissions.

Carbon dioxide, a by-product of car engines, power plants and other fossil fuel-burning industries, traps heat that otherwise would escape the atmosphere. A broad scientific consensus, endorsed by a UN-sponsored network of climatologists, holds that most of the past century’s global temperature rise - 1 degree Fahrenheit – was probably caused by the accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

Latest figures, for 2000, show that the United States accounted for 21% of the world’s emissions of carbon dioxide, methane and the handful of other problem gases, compared with 14% for the 25-nation European Union.

The Kyoto Protocol established a schedule of greenhouse-gas emissions for 30 industrial countries that ratified it: By 2012 the European Union, for example, must cut emissions by 8% below 1990 levels, and Japan by 6%.

As for the post-2012 period, expert studies suggest a ”menu” of approaches to restraining emissions, particularly if poorer countries in various stages of development take on commitments.

The options might include firm caps and rollbacks for some, with voluntary targets for others; emissions quotas targeted at specific industries, such as electric-generation; acceptance of energy-efficiency standards; and more liberal “indexed” emissions targets that rise with economic growth.

The United States and China favour what some call the ”bottom-up” approach - individual governments deciding what to do, without a multilateral negotiation.

Environmentalists dismiss this as ineffective, saying treaty-bound commitments are essential.