Frosty Response to Shrub's Polluting Climate Plan Via NY Transfer News * All the News That Doesn't Fit Friday February 15 12:19 PM ET (via Yahoo) Bush Climate Plan Prompts Frosty Response By Robin Pomeroy BRUSSELS (Reuters) - President Bush's new climate strategy met a frosty response around the world on Friday, with one EU politician questioning the morality of a plan that will let U.S. greenhouse gas emissions rise. Bush offered incentives to firms for voluntarily slowing the rise in heat-trapping gas emissions blamed for global warming, having rejected the mandatory reductions demanded by the 1997 Kyoto Treaty which he said would harm the U.S. economy. `It's really shocking...it's a bit like saying: 'wealth is for us today in 2002 and we will leave the problems for our children or for people in Africa or Asia','' said Belgium's Green Party Energy Minister Olivier Deleuze. Deleuze led the European Union delegation at talks last year which secured support from most of the rest of the world to push on with Kyoto without the United States. `It's a policy that's not very moral, I feel,'' he told Belgian television channel RTBF. Many scientists say gas emissions -- particularly carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels -- are trapping heat in the earth's atmosphere, risking massive climate changes that could lead to disastrous floods and droughts. The United States is by far the biggest polluter, generating roughly a quarter of the world's man-made ''greenhouse gases.'' The Bush plan seeks to cut emissions of three of the worst air pollutants -- but not carbon dioxide -- by setting limits, assigning permits for each ton of pollution, and allowing firms to trade them in what the White House called a `cap and trade'' system. Greenpeace calculated that the policies would allow U.S. emissions to rise 29 percent above 1990 levels by the end of the decade. COOL WELCOME TO STRATEGY Analysts said the Bush plan was unlikely to break the European Union-led coalition of countries determined to push ahead with Kyoto with or without the United States. `I don't think that the Bush plan is either substantial enough in terms of emissions cuts or international enough to offer an alternative to wavering countries like Japan where there is political momentum behind ratification,'' Thomas Legge of the Centre for European Policy Studies think-tank said. German Environment Minister Juergen Trittin echoed the sentiment of many pro-Kyoto countries by welcoming the long-awaited announcement of a U.S. policy on global warming, but decrying its content. `I welcome the fact that with this program President Bush has recognized the need for measures to tackle climate change; however at first glance the contents look disappointing,'' he said. EU Environment Commissioner Margot Wallstrom said Bush's policy could lead the United States to break a long-standing commitment to stabilize greenhouse emissions. `It seems that President Bush's proposals will not lead to a reduction of greenhouse gas emissions but allow a significant increase. This raises the question whether the U.S. will be able to meet its commitments under the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change,'' Wallstrom said. Although Bush pulled out of the Kyoto treaty last year, the United States remains a party to the earlier 1990 climate change convention which his father signed up to at the Rio ''Earth Summit'' in 1990. The convention commits developed countries to try to stabilize their greenhouse gas emissions at 1990 levels. U.S. emissions are already around 13 percent higher than in 1990. `The EU has already reduced its emissions below 1990 levels and we will meet our Kyoto target of an eight percent reduction by 2008-2012,'' Wallstrom said. `(Bush's) plan is no alternative to the Kyoto Protocol (which) is the only effective international framework for combating global warming and we urge the United States to return to the Kyoto process.'' Japan, whose support for Kyoto is vital if the treaty is to come into legal force, said it wasn't `extremely happy'' with the Bush plan and intended to ratify Kyoto. `It's obvious that this plan won't achieve the seven percent reduction target which the United States had agreed to in Kyoto,'' Environment Minister Hiroshi Oki said. NOTE OF SUPPORT One of the few supportive comments came from Australia. Prime Minister John Howard said Canberra shared Washington's skepticism of Kyoto which imposes emissions cuts on developed countries but not on poorer, rapidly growing economies like India and China. `We are a net exporter of energy and unless you have the developing countries involved we would be hurt,'' Howard said. China did not comment directly on the Bush plan but voiced support for Kyoto. `We think developed countries have the obligation to take the lead in reducing greenhouse gas emissions because they are the main greenhouse gas emitters in the past and now,'' Foreign Ministry spokesman Kong Quan said in a statement. The goal of Bush's overall plan is to lower the U.S. rate of greenhouse gas emissions from an estimated 183 tons per million dollars of gross domestic product in 2002 to 151 tons per million dollars of GDP in 2012. Under Kyoto, Washington had agreed to cut emissions by seven percent of 1990 levels by 2012, regardless of economic growth. Chris Hewett, of Britain's Institute for Public Policy Research, said: `In climate change terms (setting efficiency targets) is nonsense, it won't help at all. The science is absolutely clear that we have to reduce emissions. `Britain has proved that you can cut emissions and still have a very healthy economy. There is no inextricable link between CO2 emissions and economic growth.'' ================================================================= NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us 339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012 http://www.blythe.org e-mail: nyt@blythe.org ================================================================= nytenv-02.19.02-01:53:39-2428