Bush's new climate strategy draws frosty global response
US President George W. 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 US 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 US 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 US. "It's a policy that's not very moral" he said.
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 US 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 tonne 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 US emissions to rise 29 per cent above 1990 levels by the end of the decade.
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 US.
Thomas Legge of the Centre for European Policy Studies think-tank said 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.
German Environment Minister Juergen Trittin echoed the sentiment of many pro-Kyoto countries by welcoming the announcement of a US policy on global warming, but decrying its content.
He said that he welcomed the fact that with this programme President Bush has recognised the need for measures to tackle climate change; however at first glance the contents look disappointing.
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