Cherokee Sage Woman

Saturday, December 10, 2005

U.S. walks out during climate change talks

By ANDREW C. REVKIN
THE NEW YORK TIMES

MONTREAL -- The United States and China, the world's current and projected leaders in emissions of greenhouse gases, refused Friday to agree to mandatory steps to curtail them as two weeks of U.N. talks on global warming neared an end.

In a sign of its growing isolation at the meeting, the Bush administration came under sharp criticism for walking out of informal discussions shortly after midnight on finding new ways to reduce emissions under the United Nations' 1992 treaty on climate change.

The walkout, by Harlan Watson, the United States' chief negotiator here, came on the last day of talks in which the administration was repeatedly assailed by the leaders of other wealthy industrialized nations for refusing to negotiate to advance the goals of that treaty.

At a closed session of about 50 delegates, Watson objected to the proposed title of a statement calling for long-term international cooperation to carry out the 1992 climate treaty, participants said. He then got up from the table and departed.

Environmentalists here called his actions the capstone of two weeks of American efforts to prevent any fresh initiatives from being discussed. "This shows just how willing the U.S. administration is to walk away from a healthy planet and its responsibilities to its own people," said Jennifer Morgan, director of the climate change project at the World Wildlife Fund.

The meeting here is ending much as it began. The world's major sources of greenhouse emissions -- the United States, big developing countries such as China and India, and a bloc led by Europe and Japan -- remain divided over how to proceed under both the 1992 treaty and the Kyoto Protocol, an addendum that took effect this year.

The original treaty -- since ratified by 189 nations, including the United States -- has no binding restrictions. The Kyoto pact does impose mandatory limits on industrialized nations, but they do not apply to developing nations, including China and India. The United States and Australia have rejected that pact.

On Friday, countries bound by the Kyoto Protocol were close to agreeing on a plan to negotiate a new set of targets and timetables for cutting emissions after its terms expire in 2012.

But under pressure from some countries that were already having trouble meeting Kyoto targets, the language included no specific year for completing talks on next steps, instead indicating that parties would "aim to complete" work "as soon as possible."