Bush and Merkel discuss climate change

US President George Bush stood his ground on greenhouse gas emissions as he went into a meeting today with German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

However, Mr Bush predicted consensus on a future framework for climate change at this week’s Group of Eight summit .

As leaders headed to Heiligendamm, and Mr Bush and Ms Merkel worked to hash out their differences on climate change, riot police struggled to keep thousands of protesters from reaching the summit site in picturesque, coastal northern Germany.

Officers fired a water cannon to force demonstrators, some hurling stones at police, back from the seven-mile fence built to protect the eight world leaders gathering today for three days of talks.

Other protesters blocked roads from the airport and the small-gauge railway used to transport journalists to Heiligendamm, forcing organisers to ferry them to the site by boat, police said.

Ms Merkel – who has made climate change the centerpiece of Germany’s G8 leadership – was using the hours before the start of the summit to champion agreement at the summit.

She is pushing specific targets for reduction of the carbon emissions believed to cause global warming, including a “two-degree” target under which global temperatures would be allowed to increase by no more than 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) before being brought back down.

Practically, experts have said that means a global reduction in emissions of 50 percent below 1990 levels by 2050. Ms Merkel supports a global carbon-trading market as one tool.

A May report from a UN network of more than 2,000 scientists estimated that the world must stabilise the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere within eight years to keep global temperatures from spiking to disastrous levels.

The US has now acknowledged that global warming is a serious problem that must be addressed, and that doing so requires a global goal. Europe and others have come around to Washington’s view that no solution is viable without the participation of developing energy guzzlers such as China, India and Brazil, and that economic growth can’t be sacrificed for progress on climate.

Mr Bush told reporters before his meeting with Merkel that he would not give ground on global warming proposals that would require mandatory caps on greenhouse gas emissions. Instead, he backed his own proposal to have the United States and other nations that spew the most greenhouse gases meet and – by the end of next year – set a long-term strategy for reducing emissions.

Mr Bush wants to bring India, China and other fast-growing countries to the negotiation table. He envisions that each country will set goals on how they want to improve energy security, reduce air pollution and cut greenhouse gases in the next 10 to 20 years.

“The United States can serve as a bridge to help find a solution,” Mr Bush said.