Environmental Groups Decry Global Warming Negotiations
16 June, 2000
By Patrick Connole
WASHINGTON — U.S. environmental activist groups on Thursday
criticized the negotiating stance taken by the Clinton
administration at talks in Bonn, Germany, for settling an
international treaty to reduce greenhouse gas emissions blamed
for causing global warming.
The groups — which include the National Environmental Trust, the
Natural Resources Defense Council, the Union of Concerned
Scientists and the World Wildlife Fund — said U.S.
representatives at the talks were trying to push through
"loopholes" that would defeat the purpose of Kyoto Protocol.
"The Clinton administration is pushing loopholes in the global
warming treaty just as big as President Bush did eight years
ago," said Philip E. Clapp, president of National Environmental
Trust.
They said positions favored by the U.S. to construct emissions
trading and investments in projects in developing countries come
at the expense of making real gas emission cuts in developed
countries like the United States.
"If the current U.S. negotiating positions were adopted, it
could instead allow these (industrialized) countries to
substantially increase their emissions over the next 10 years,"
said Alden Meyer, director of government relations for the Union
of Concerned Scientists.
That treaty, named after the Japanese city where the basic
agreement was negotiated in late 1997, aims to curb fossil fuel
emissions by industrialized nations by an average of 5.2 percent
below 1990 levels by the years 2010-2012.
Republicans, and many Democrats in Congress, do not like the
treaty, saying its goals would gut the U.S. economy and allow
developing nations like India and China to skirt the carbon
emissions reductions that developed nations must meet.
The Senate has not ratified the treaty, and the White House has
never submitted it for a vote, saying negotiations to settle a
final agreement must happen first.
In an attack from the opposite political camp, former Republican
lawmaker Jack Kemp, currently a distinguished fellow at the
Competitive Enterprise Institute, said the high gasoline prices
witnessed across the nation were a sign of the future if the
Kyoto Protocol was ever put in action.
"With gas prices surging, and the Environmental Protection Agency
responsible for up to 40 cents of the record-high price in the
Midwest, President Clinton still had the nerve this Monday to
call on Congress to 'stop blocking our common sense efforts to
combat global warming'," Kemp said.
"Well, Mr. President, if these extraordinary energy costs are
what you want for America, then go ahead and submit the Kyoto
Protocol to the Senate for ratification."
The White House task force on climate change was not immediately
available for comment.
SOURCE: Reuters
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