Climate Wrangle on the Potomac: Bush Hosts Major Economies

WASHINGTON, DC, September 28, 2007 (ENS) - "There is a way forward that will enable us to grow our economies and protect the environment, and that's called technology," President George W. Bush today told the representatives of 17 world leaders plus the United Nations in the first in a series of meetings with "major economies" on energy security and climate change.

"Global free trade in energy technology" coupled with reliance on nuclear power and clean coal generation form the core of the "new approach on greenhouse gas emissions" President Bush outlined in his speech to the delegates today at the U.S. State Department.

President George W. Bush addresses the Major Economies Meeting on Energy Security and Climate Change (Photo by Chris Greenberg courtesy The White House)

By next summer, Bush said, the United States will convene a meeting of heads of state "to finalize the goal and other elements of this approach, including a strong and transparent system for measuring our progress toward meeting the goal we set."

This will require "concerted effort by all our nations," Bush told representatives of Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, the European Union, France, Germany, Indonesia, India, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Russia, South Africa, South Korea, and the United Kingdom, plus the United Nations.

Bush said this process will contribute to the United Nations efforts to craft a successor agreement by 2009 to the Kyoto Protocol which expires in 2012.

"Only by doing the necessary work this year will it be possible to reach a global consensus at the United Nations in 2009," Bush said.

"Each nation will design its own separate strategies for making progress toward achieving this long-term goal. These strategies will reflect each country's different energy resources, different stages of development, and different economic needs," said the U.S. president.

Bush intends to ensure that the United States economy grows as a result of global free trade in energy technology, particularly nuclear technology.

Kewaunee nuclear power plant in Wisconsin (Photo courtesy Nuclear Management Co.)

Critics of Bush's approach to dealing with climate change were quick to point out that setting a long-term goal for reducing greenhouse gas emissions is different from adopting legally binding targets for emissions reductions as 36 industrialized nations have done under the Kyoto Protocol.

In describing their own efforts, other industrialized nations showed they are prepared to take much stronger action than the Bush administration. The European Union, whose member states form the core of Kyoto Protocol, repeated its commitment to reduce emissions 20 percent below 1990 levels by 2020.

Canada, which ratified the Kyoto Protocol, but has since backed away from its commitment, said it plans to reduce emissions 20 percent below current levels in that timeframe.

Even Australia, which did not adopt the Kyoto Protocol, said it plans to establish a domestic cap-and-trade carbon trading system by 2011.

"We have come here from New York, where the Secretary-General convened the High Level Event on Climate Change," said Yvo de Boer, who heads the Secretariat of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, UNFCCC.

"The event concluded with a clear call from 80 heads of state and government for a breakthrough at the United Nations Climate Change Conference to be held in Bali in December this year. World leaders called for a comprehensive and inclusive process on the future to be launched in Bali and for a new framework to be in place by 2009," de Boer said.

President Bush did not attend the working sessions of secretary-general's event, but did attend a private dinner Monday evening.

Indonesia will host the UN's annual climate change conference in Bali, December 3-14. The official Indonesian news agency Antara said today that "the core of any UNFCCC deal will be a mandatory cap on emissions by rich countries, a principle that Bush has been fiercely opposing since 2001."

After the UN high-level climate event on Monday, "there is an emerging consensus that a Road Map for negotiating the future regime should be launched in Bali and be concluded by 2009," said South African Minister of Environmental Affairs and Tourism Marthinus van Schalkwyk.

South African Environment Minister Marthinus van Schlkwyk (Photo courtesy Earth Negotiations Bulletin)

"By 2009 we will need a common understanding that all developed countries need to be playing on the same field, with quantitative mitigation targets, and that major developing countries need to be playing on a matching field, one which involves recognition and positive incentives for their measurable action," said the South African minister.

"We must conclude international negotiations by 2009 on the climate regime after 2012," van Schalkwyk said. "A Road Map for multilateral negotiations to achieve this must be agreed in Bali. 2008 will be an important milestone in the run-up to an agreement, by 2009, that builds on the UNFCCC and its Kyoto Protocol."

Thirteen million South Africans do not yet have access to modern energy resources, so ensuring universal access to energy remains a critical priority, said the minister, whose government is in the midst of developing its own capacity for nuclear power generation.

Canadian Environment Minister John Baird said his government believes that "any post-2012 global agreement must be comprehensive and include all major emitting countries, be long term and flexible to maintain economic growth and prosperity, and encourage the development and deployment of new and existing technologies."

"One of the important issues to note is that meetings like these are complementary to, but not a replacement for, the United Nations process on fighting climate change," said Baird. "Canada is committed to continuing to work forcefully within the United Nations, understanding that it is key to achieving global results."

The Bush administration maintains that the "major economies" meetings are intended to reinforce and accelerate discussions under the UNFCCC and contribute to a global agreement under the UN Convention by 2009.

Four more meetings will be held in 2008, culminating, "tentatively," in a leaders' summit, according to a Bush administration document.

Eileen Claussen heads the Pew Center on Global Climate Change. (Photo courtesy ENB)

"If President Bush is sincere in his goal of an effective UN agreement, the United States must support the launch of formal negotiations in Bali," said Claussen, who as deputy assistant secretary of state for environmental affairs in the Clinton administration helped to develop the Kyoto climate protocol.

Parallel to the Bush administration major economies meeting, nongovernmental organizations held their own conference Thursday and Friday, hosted by the National Environmental Trust, the United Nations Foundation and the Royal Institute of International Affairs.

The NGOs said their meeting was necessary "in order to provide balance and ensure a focus on the UN climate process."

Climate change NGO experts from Australia, Brazil, China, Germany, Italy, India, Japan, Mexico, South Africa, and the United Kingdom attended this parallel summit.

Many of the NGO leaders act as official advisors to their government on global warming and will be members of their respective nation's delegations at this December's Bali meeting.

National Environmental Trust President Philip Clapp said the speech President Bush delivered this morning offered nothing new. "The president talked movingly about what technology can do to stop global warming someday, but he still offered nothing the United States would be willing to do today, and that's what everybody is waiting for," Clapp said.

"None of the technology investments he listed as U.S. accomplishments has done anything to cut global warming pollution," Clapp said. "U.S. emissions are rising one-and-a-half times faster than they were ten years ago."

"Despite a few hopeful signs that he had changed his mind, the president stuck with the shrinking group of climate change dead-enders who are still fighting against a new, binding treaty," he said.

"This could have been a useful meeting, but the Bush administration has turned it into the same old exhausted wrangle over multinational treaties and non-binding national plans. This has been going on since the president took office, and the rest of the world has moved on."

James Connaughton chairs the White House Council on Environmental Quality. (Photo courtesy U.S. Senate)

In his opening remarks to the invited representatives of major economies on Thursday, James Connaughton, who chairs the White House Council on Environmental Quality, said today the world emits "somewhere in the order of 22 gigatons of carbon dioxide," every year.

"That is a massive amount of carbon dioxide that's causing, you know, increased concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. But under future projections, we are looking at 37 gigatons of greenhouse gases," Connaughton said.

"Now, if we take one of the proposals on the table, which is to cut greenhouse gases by 50 percent by 2050, that suggests that we collectively need to find more than 25 gigatons of reductions," Connaughton erroneously calculated, as half of 37 gigatons would be 18.5 gigatons.

Comparing one gigaton to "several hundred nuclear power plants," Connaughton said, "Today we have 400. So one can imagine, as we go forward, we have to see is the globe prepared to develop in advance what could be a need for 1,000 to 2,500 nuclear power plants."

Commented an observer who requested anonymity, that scenario would create a lot of business for President Bush's Global Nuclear Energy Partnership.

Copyright Environment News Service (ENS) 2007. All rights reserved.