EU, US Agree 15 Years Left To Avert World-Wide Climate Disaster
Pastor Dale Morgan
EU, US Agree 15 Years Left To Avert World-Wide Climate Disaster*
Berlin (AFP) June 04, 2007
The United States and the European Union agree that the next 15 years
will be decisive in averting a global warming disaster but disagree on a
strategy, German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said Sunday.
"I do not think that we are so far apart in our underlying analysis of
the situation," Steinmeier told Deutschlandfunk radio. He said
Washington and Europe concurred that "politicians have at most another
15 years to take steps to ensure that climate change does not become a
catastrophe."
But Steinmeier said while the US administration thinks climate change
could be addressed by switching to cleaner energy sources, Europe
insists that scientific advances must be accompanied by a new set of
binding targets on reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
"We are not really arguing about the restrictions in themselves, but
about which philosophy to adopt," he said.
"The United States believes we can manage climate change by rapidly
developing new technologies. Well, yes, we need new technology and we
must put as much money and creativity into developing it.
"But this alone will not be enough over the next 15 years. We need to
accompany this with binding targets."
Steinmeier said he had based his impressions of the US position on talks
with US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and other officials in the
run-up to the G8 summit which kicks off in Germany on Wednesday.
The June 6-8 summit is expected to be dominated by the thorny debate of
how best to tackle climate change.
A heated row erupted between the host nation and the United States in
recent weeks as Chancellor Angela Merkel sought to win US support for a
bold G8 declaration on slashing greenhouse gas emissions.
But the United States rejected large parts of the draft declaration.
The country is the world's biggest producer of greenhouse gas emissions
but refused to ratify the Kyoto Protocol which imposes limits on
developed nations' output of the harmful gases.
US President George W. Bush this week unveiled a plan for a "new
framework" to fight global warming with the help of other leading
polluters, including rapidly industrialising India and China.
But experts have slammed the absence of enforceable measures in the Bush
proposal.
Source: Agence France-Presse