Nations meet again to battle global warming

October 25, 1999
Web posted at: 11:30 p.m. EDT (0330 GMT)

In this story: Landmark protocol for greenhouse gas reduction Surprise challenge RELATED STORIES, SITES

BONN, Germany -- Sharp lines of disagreement were forming as representatives of 168 nations convened for a two-week international conference aimed at reducing the air pollution blamed for global warming.

European and U.S. officials were differing Monday over Washington's desire to allow the unlimited purchase of pollution "credits" from other nations as part of the Kyoto protocol agreement of 1997.

"What we're trying to do is to try to benefit our environment but at the same time we don't want to damage our economy," U.S. special global-warming negotiator Mark Hambley told reporters in defending unlimited purchase of credits.

Under the credit system, heavy-polluting nations such as the United States can buy flexibility in reaching their emissions targets from those that fulfill their targets.

Landmark protocol for greenhouse gas reduction

The landmark Kyoto protocol is aimed at reducing greenhouse gases to about 5 percent of 1990 levels. It was agreed to in Kyoto, Japan, in 1997 -- five years after 150 countries committed to the general goal of cutting emissions at a conference in Rio de Janeiro.

The theory of global warming holds that rising levels of air pollution in the earth's atmosphere are warming the planet and threatening the environment. Much of that pollution is blamed on emissions from gasoline-burning vehicles, known as greenhouse gases.

Washington's unlikely ally in the dispute is Russia, which received a high limit in earlier talks and has lots of pollution credits to sell.

Jos Delbeke, head of the European Union's climate change unit, estimated that without caps on the sale of pollution credits, as much as half of the targeted emissions reductions over the next decade could come from surplus Russian and Ukrainian credits -- which would not benefit the environment.

"We are facing an agenda full of difficult political issues," said Jan Szyszko, the conference president. "It is quite difficult to get consensus."

Surprise challenge

German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder surprised some observers Monday by calling for early ratification of the Kyoto Treaty six years early, by 2002 instead of 2008-2012 as originally agreed.

The executive secretary of the United Nations convention on climate change, Michael Zammit Cutajar, called the proposed 2002 deadline "an encouraging goal."

Only 14 nations, all of them developing countries, have ratified the Kyoto protocol, which must be adopted by 55 nations -- including industrialized nations that account for the production of 55 percent of the world's greenhouse gases -- before it can become legally binding.

The U.S. Senate, which recently failed to ratify an international nuclear test ban treaty, has said it won't take the Kyoto protocol up until there is measurable participation by developing nations and until costs of implementation are addressed.

Negotiations for the Kyoto protocol are scheduled to end at a November 2000 meeting in The Hague, Netherlands, triggering the ratification process for major industrialized nations.

The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.

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