UN: US must be part of climate change agreement

Any agreement hammered out by a massive United Nations climate change conference starting in Indonesia this week would not make sense without the participation of the US, the world’s top emitter of greenhouse gases, the UN’s climate chief said today.

Delegates from 190 nations will gather on the resort island of Bali on Monday for the largest global warming conference ever, bringing more than 10,000 people together for two weeks of marathon discussions, including Hollywood stars, former US Vice President Al Gore, fishermen and drought-stricken farmers.

World leaders will attempt to launch negotiations leading to a replacement for the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012.

Among the most contentious issues will be whether emission cuts should be mandatory or voluntary and how to help the world’s poorest countries adapt to a worsening climate.

Yvo de Boer, general secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, said the role of the United States “would be critical” in the discussions and that delegates must come up with a roadmap that is embraced by Washington.

“To design a long-term response to climate change that does not include the world’s largest emitter and the world’s largest economy just would not make any sense,” he told reporters.

The US, which along with Australia refused to sign the Kyoto Protocol, said ahead of the Bali talks that it was eager to launch negotiations, but has been among industrialised nations leading a campaign against mandatory emission cuts.

But now the US may find itself isolated at the conference, given that Australian Prime Minister-elect Kevin Rudd, whose party swept to power in general elections just one week ago, immediately put signing the Kyoto pact at the top of his international agenda.

US President George Bush, trying to fend off charges that America is not doing enough, said this week that a final Energy Department report showed American emissions of carbon dioxide, a leading greenhouse gas, declined by 1.5 percent last year while the US economy grew.

“Energy security and climate change are two of the important challenges of our time. The US takes these challenges seriously,” he said in a statement. “This puts us well ahead of the goal I set in 2002.”

The two-week meeting comes after a Nobel Prize-winning UN network of scientists issued a landmark report concluding the level of carbon and other heat-trapping “greenhouse gas” emissions must be stabilised by 2015 and decline from there to stave off the worst effects of climate change.

The solutions are within reach, they said, from investing in renewable energy to improving energy efficiency. Without action, temperatures will rise, resulting in droughts, severe weather, dying species and other consequences, they said.

“It is already affecting the livelihoods of people we work with,” said Dr. Charles Ehrhart, Climate Change Co-ordinator for CARE International, citing concerns over food security and access to water. “It is contributing to tensions within and between communities.”

The Kyoto pact signed one decade ago required 36 industrial nations to reduce carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gasses emitted by power plants and other industrial, agricultural and transportation sources. It set relatively small target reductions averaging 5% below 1990 levels by 2012.

A new agreement must be concluded within two years to give countries time to ratify it and to ensure a smooth, uninterrupted transition. But much of what will happen behind closed doors in Bali will revolve around nuances, with debates over words like “commitment” versus “mandatory.”

De Boer said countries needed to act now but acknowledged that anyone who expects the Bali meeting to result in specific targets or long-term solutions “will leave disappointed.”

Industrialised nations, which have pumped the lion’s share of greenhouses gases into the atmosphere to date, should take the lead in reducing emissions, he said. Developing countries should not be required to cut their emissions immediately but should be required to slow the growth of carbon dioxide and other heat trapping gases.

“Since developing countries are just beginning to grow their economies, it’s not reasonable at this stage to ask them to reduce their emissions,” de Boer said, referring partly to China and India, two rapidly growing economies which oppose any measures that will impinge on efforts to lift their people from poverty.

At best, analysts believe, Bali could lead to a two-year negotiation in which the US under a new administration, the Europeans and other industrial nations commit to deepening blanket emissions cuts. And they say major developing countries could agree to enshrine some national policies – China’s auto emission standards, for example, or energy-efficiency targets for power plants – as international obligations.