US says it's cutting greenhouse gas emissions

US officials told a UN conference on climate change that their government was doing more than most to protect the earth’s atmosphere.

In response, leading environmental groups blasted Washington for refusing to sign the Kyoto Protocol, a global treaty that aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Canada opened the 10-day UN Climate Control Conference yesterday, with about 10,000 experts from 180 nations, to brainstorm on ways to slow the alarming effects of greenhouses gases and global warming.

The conference aims to forge new agreements on cutting poisonous emissions, considered by many scientists to be the planet’s most pressing environmental issue.

Dr Harlan Watson, senior climate negotiator for the US Department of State, said that while President George Bush declined to join the treaty, the US leader took global warming seriously. He noted greenhouse gas emissions had actually gone down by 0.8% under Bush.

“With regard to what the US is doing on climate change, the actions we have taken are next to none in the world,” Watson said.

He is leading a delegation of dozens of American officials at the conference and will be joined by US Under-secretary of State Paula Dobriansky next week, when 120 government ministers arrive for the high-profile final negotiations.

Elizabeth May of the Sierra Club Canada, however, accused the world’s biggest polluter of trying to derail the Kyoto accord.

“We have a lot of positive, constructive American engagement here in Montreal - and none of it’s from the Bush administration, which represents the single biggest threat to global progress,” May said, adding that Washington had “continually tried to derail” the Kyoto process.

The US, the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases, has refused to ratify the Kyoto Protocol, saying it would harm the US economy and is flawed by the lack of restrictions on emissions by emerging economic powers such as China and India.