US climate plans meet mixed response

President Bush has seized the initiative on climate change in a move that pleased some fellow world leaders but infuriated his environmental critics. In a striking change of tone, he says he wants the US to be part of a global climate deal when the first period of the Kyoto Protocol ends in 2012. And he has offered to lead a new process under which the world's leading 15 emitters of greenhouse gases -- including China and India -- will be invited to Washington to discuss what they can do to cut emissions. He wants that group to reach a consensus on a framework for tackling climate change within 18 months. In the meantime each nation would set "midterm" goals "that reflect their own mix of energy sources and future energy needs" -- code for: The US will not sign up to anything that does not recognize its dependency on highly polluting coal. He demanded that all nations should cut tariff barriers to the transfer of environmental technology -- a move that would boost earning for high-tech US firms. The speech on May 31 was Bush's biggest shift yet on climate change. In July 2005, the president offered his first explicit acknowledgment that humans might be contributing to the problem of global warming. This year, for the first time, he mentioned climate change in his State of the Union Address. In one sense, the change in tack has been forced on Bush by scientific advances in the understanding of how greenhouse gas emissions contribute to global warming. But it is also an example of the kind of policy adjustment that is becoming increasingly common in the second half of his second term. Skepticism The statement was welcomed by UK Prime Minister Tony Blair as a major change in attitude. But others accused the president of attempting to divert attention from next week's meeting of the G8 leading nations, where Bush will be under intense pressure. Critics were quick to point out that the international community is already moving towards a post-Kyoto agreement for mandatory emissions reductions under the auspices of the United Nations and does not need this parallel process to discuss voluntary global warming emissions-cutting goals. "This plan doesn't actually take a large bite out of global warming pollution like we need to, but instead just 're-warms' old ideas," said Congressman Ed Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat who chairs the newly formed House of Representatives Select Committee on Energy Independence And Global Warming. "It's vitally important for America and this president to re-engage internationally on this issue, and agree to binding targets for reducing heat-trapping pollution," Markey said. "Instead, all that President Bush is willing to do is engage in fruitless discussions until the very end of his administration, leaving his successor with the task of actually doing something." Bush is being pressed to accept caps on US emissions of greenhouse gases and to join the global system of trading carbon emissions credits which is channeling billions of dollars into clean development in poor countries. But a White House spokesman made it plain that both were unacceptable. His plan was greeted with immediate skepticism by environmental groups. "This is a transparent effort to divert attention from the president's refusal to accept any emissions reductions proposals at next week's G8 summit," said Philip Clapp, president of the National Environmental Trust. Tony Juniper, head of Friends of the Earth UK, said: "This is a deliberate and carefully crafted attempt to derail any prospect of a climate change agreement (at the G8 summit). "Basically we should see this as a delaying tactic to keep the climate change issue off his back in terms of any real decisions until he leaves office."