US-Led Climate Plan Won’t Supplant Kyoto

August 1st, 2005 at 17:08 Björn Hallberg

What a surprise. Another desperate act to snub international cooperation with a dummy accord, consisting mainly of puppet nations.

A U.S.-led Asian-Pacific accord on spreading technology to fight global warming has hazy targets and is unlikely to end up supplanting the far broader U.N. Kyoto protocol, experts said on Thursday. Unlike the 152-nation Kyoto pact, the six-country accord between the United States, Australia, China, India, Japan and South Korea sets no binding goals for cutting emissions of greenhouse gases from fossil fuels blamed for rising temperatures.

Most experts said the pact was unlikely to undermine Kyoto, partly because it was limited and echoed a 1992 U.N. Climate Convention that most nations concluded was inadequate to curb a build-up of greenhouse gases caused by human activity. “The world tried (non-binding goals)…in 1992 and not much happened. This is more or less repeating that effort, but with more vague goals and fewer countries,” said Jorund Buen, a partner at Point Carbon analysis group. The U.S.-led deal “has nothing to do with other, much bigger initiatives, which are of a global nature,” said Javier Solana, foreign policy chief for the European Union which is among Kyoto’s strongest backers.

The United States, the world’s biggest polluter, and Australia are the only main developed nations outside the 1997 Kyoto pact, designed to limit a build-up of heat-trapping gases that many scientists fear will trigger more storms, droughts and flooding and cause sea levels to rise. However, Kyoto excludes developing nations such as China and India, home to a third of humanity, from a first period of targets to 2012. Both have ratified Kyoto and promised to take part in talks to widen the pact beyond 2012.

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