Nations agree on steps to revive climate treaty

By Thomas Fuller and Andrew C. Revkin

NUSA DUA, Indonesia: The world's countries wrapped up two weeks of intense and at times emotional talks here on Saturday with a two-year timetable for reviving an ailing, aging climate treaty.

The deal came after the United States, facing sharp verbal attacks in a final open-door negotiating session, reversed its opposition to a last-minute amendment by India. "We've listened very closely to many of our colleagues here during these two weeks, but especially to what has been said in this hall today," Under Secretary of State Paula Dobriansky, who led the American delegation, told the assembled delegates. "We will go forward and join consensus," she said.

The Bush administration had earlier made a significant change in policy, ending its long-held objection to the need to formally negotiate new steps to avoid climate dangers. This time, the United States agreed to set a deadline for an addendum to the original treaty, which was signed by President George W. Bush's father in 1992. The agreement notes the need for "urgency" in addressing climate change and recognizes that "deep cuts in global emissions will be required." Still, it does not bind the United States or any country to commitments on reducing greenhouse pollution. "It starts a negotiation that allows but doesn't require an outcome where the U.S. takes a cap," or a national limit on greenhouse gases, said David Doniger, a former climate negotiator in the Clinton administration and the climate policy director of the Natural Resources Defense Council.

The agreement sets the stage for some commitments by developing countries to reduce greenhouse emissions. But it includes no language making such steps mandatory. American negotiators here had pushed hard to get developing countries, including emerging economic giants like China and India, to agree to seek cuts while retaining flexibility on how to make them. The last-minute dispute Saturday was over the wording of commitments by developing countries. The overall agreement, if completed by 2009, would also ensure continuity for parties to the Kyoto Protocol, the only existing addendum to the original climate treaty, which took effect in 2005. The Kyoto pact limits emissions by three dozen industrialized countries but has been rejected by the United States.

Its emissions caps expire in 2012, and adherents, particularly European countries, were eager to start the process of setting new limits to sustain markets in emissions credits — a keystone of the protocol. The Bush administration is increasingly under pressure domestically to take action on global warming. Climate legislation is gaining momentum in the Democrat-controlled Congress and presidential candidates from both parties are generally more engaged on the subject.

In April, the Supreme Court rejected the Bush administration's contention that carbon dioxide was not a pollutant and ordered it to re-examine the case for regulating carbon dioxide from vehicles. Dozens of states are moving ahead with caps on greenhouse gases. The differences in philosophy at the meeting were striking and fundamental. European Union negotiators said they favored specific government-imposed caps on emissions and wanted industrial countries to lead the way. The United States favored relying on "aspirational" goals, research to advance nonpolluting energy technologies and a mix of measures, including mandatory steps like efficiency standards for vehicles and appliances — but all set by individual nations, not mandated by a global pact. Developing countries, a vaguely defined group that includes countries as different as China and Costa Rica, have long insisted that rich countries, which spent more than a century adding carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases to the atmosphere, should take the first step.

The tenor of the conference improved markedly after European nations, frustrated with the United States, threatened on Thursday to boycott talks proposed by the Bush administration in Hawaii next month. Germany's environment minister, Sigmar Gabriel, who led the criticism of the United States earlier in the week, said Friday, "The climate in the climate convention has changed a little bit. "It's true that during the last night and during the negotiations America was more flexible than in the first part of the conference. "We very much appreciate this. Not only the Americans but also other parties." Reuters reported Friday that the European Union had dropped a central demand that the guidelines for the agreement should include a reference to tough emissions targets for wealthy countries to meet by 2020. Coincidentally or not, the mood shifted after a speech Thursday by former Vice President Al Gore, who shared the Nobel Peace Prize this year for helping to alert the world to the danger of global warming.

To be continue in other article...

(Jakarta, Kamis 21 February 2008, 07.39 pagi)

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