1 December 2005The Vancouver Sun / Montreal Gazette
Canada will continue to try to engage the United States in climate change talks, Foreign Affairs Minister Pierre Pettigrew said Wednesday, despite increasing pressure to give up on the current U.S. administration and move ahead with a new international pact on long-term greenhouse gas reductions.
"The United States is responsible for 25 per cent of all greenhouse gas emissions. They are part of the problem so they should be part of the solution as well,'' said Pettigrew, who heads the Canadian delegation to the United Nations Climate Change Conference taking place this week and next in Montreal.
"There is more and more pressure on the U.S. to assume its responsibilities toward the international community. What's important right now is to maintain this pressure, and increase it.''
Pettigrew called Wednesday a "historic day'' because, after years of negotiations, the Meeting of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol adopted a package of rules known as the Marakesh Accord that define the mechanics of how Kyoto will be implemented.
The Kyoto Protocol is an international agreement that commits its 180-member countries to reducing greenhouse gas emissions by an average of 5.2 per cent below 1990 levels by 2012. The U.S. has refused to sign on to that protocol.
Tuesday, U.S. climate change negotiator Dr. Harlan Watson said his country is making progress on the climate change issue. He said the U.S. is committed to reducing the ``greenhouse gas intensity of the U.S. economy by 18 per cent by 2012.''
Watson also made it clear the U.S. will not discuss or negotiate future commitments to legally binding targets for greenhouse gas emissions after 2012, when Kyoto expires.
"The rest of the world must not allow President (George W.) Bush to take these talks hostage,'' said Alden Meyer, director of strategy and policy at the Union of Concerned Scientists, a Washington, D.C.-based environmental group. "They should find a way forward without the United States, and we expect the next administration is likely to come into this process.''
He said Watson's use of "greenhouse gas intensity'' targets is a "smokescreen for a failure to act.'' He said Bush's approach of voluntarily targets for business is not working and will result in a nearly 30 per cent increase in emissions by 2012.
Greenpeace official Steven Guilbeault said the international community should not waste time nor should it curb its ambitions in hopes the U.S. might sign on to legally-binding emission reduction targets.
"The success of this meeting depends on Canada and the other countries being willing to leave the U.S. behind,''he said.
Delegates at Wednesday's plenary meeting, particularly those from developing countries where the negative impacts of climate change are expected to be most severe, begged the international community to get moving on setting emissions reduction targets beyond 2012.
"The sea level is rising every day in the Marshall Islands, and the life of the people is endangered every day,'' a delegate from that island state in the North Pacific told the plenary. "'It is very important that we take action immediately so that the lives of the people living in these low lying islands be preserved.''
European Union delegates seemed hopeful this conference will succeed in bringing more countries on board and in mapping out a strategy for action after 2012.
"We now have a spirit among all parties that climate change is a subject of great urgency for all the countries,'' said U.K. delegation head Sarah Hendry.
Added Austria delegation head Helmut Hojesky: Kyoto has given its members "a legal obligation to look at the longer-term commitments we need to take as industrial countries to make sure we tackle climate change. We hope we can set up something which will result in new targets for industrial countries. At the same time, it is important to grow participation.''
Montreal Gazette
