December
6, 2007 Capitol Hill
has No Effect on White House Climate Policy
Bali
Over 10,000 delegates from 187 countries attending the UN climate
change conference here were enthused Thursday as the US Senate
Environment and Public Works Committee approved a bill to cut
greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in major sectors by 70 percent by
2050 but it had little effect on the US government delegation.
With the new government in Australia deciding to ratify the Kyoto
Protocol, the US is now the only industrialized country that is
refusing to do so. Many states in the US are far ahead of the Bush
administration in terms of legislation to combat climate change. Now
the Senate has joined it while the Congress is to take up another
GHG emission reduction bill.
But the US government delegation is not shifting from its stance
that they are only prepared to have "nothing off the (negotiating)
table".
The Japanese team shocked everyone else on the opening day of the
Bali summit Monday by suggesting that the Kyoto Protocol should be
scrapped because there was no point in continuing with it if the US
did not come on board.
On Wednesday, they changed their position, saying they meant to
build on the protocol, not to scrap it, but they still would not
commit to any mandatory emission cuts post-2012 when the protocol
ends - the only industrialized country apart from the US to hold
out.
Alden Meyer of the Union of Concerned Scientists - an NGO based in
Cambridge, Massachusetts - said Japan was "essentially afraid to
take on obligations that the US and China do not have, because their
industry has to compete with industry in these two countries".
Japan had suggested to India on the eve of the conference that there
should be industry-wise caps on GHG emissions that would be the same
across all countries. Under this, a 100 tonne cement plant would be
allowed to emit, say 1,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide - the main GHG -
per year, whether it was located in Japan, the US, China or India.
India had rejected this, saying the cost of producing one tonne of
cement, for example, was very different in different countries, and
so the emission target could not be the same.
Japan's position has been sharply criticized by its own NGOs which
say "it is very unfortunate that the country where the first
protocol to combat climate change was formed (the Kyoto Protocol) is
now trying to scuttle its successor".
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