Greenpeace activists projected a message to US President George W. Bush on the Washington Monument Tuesday to call attention to Bush's global warming policies on the eve of an international climate policy in Hawaii.
The two-day meeting that began Wednesday is the second in a series of talks initiated by the United States that initially drew intense criticism from Europe. The first meeting, held last September, was widely perceived as an attempt by the Bush administration to circumvent mandatory emissions cuts that would likely be part of any deal drafted in talks that began in Bali, where negotiations began in December on the successor treaty that is to replace the Kyoto Protocol.
When Bush initially announced the plan last summer, the German Green Party's floor leader Jürgen Trittin accused the US president of developing a "strategy for hindering climate protection." Without the participation of the countries most affected by climate change, Bush just wants to "sit down together with the biggest polluters to delay any binding emissions reductions targets for as long as possible," he said.
At the time, the Bush administration's official line was that new technologies -- and not mandatory emissions curbs -- will play the decisive role in reducing greenhouse gases.
For a time, it looked as though Bush was attempting to gain India and China as allies in order to stymie any deal that would require mandatory emissions cuts. But attitudes in Europe have improved since the Bush administration agreed in Bali in December to continue to working toward a final agreement, which is expected to take shape in Copenhagen in 2009.
According to the Süddeutsche Zeitung, Jim Connaughton, chairman of the White House Council on Environmental Quality and head of the US delegation, told reporters last week that the meeting will focus on "a few key areas from the Bali road map where the major economies can make a detailed contribution to be brought into the UN negotiations." The US invited delegates from the UN and the EU to Hawaii, as well as representatives from Australia, Brazil, Britain, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Russia, South Africa and South Korea.
Europeans have reacted positively to Washington's apparent change of tune in recent weeks. "If the United States had boycotted Bali, we would have withdrawn from its conferences of the world's major energy consuming nations," German Environment Minister Sigmar Gabriel told SPIEGEL. The US delegation made headlines in December when it appeared poised to block progress towards a deal that could include binding emissions targets -- only to retract its objection at the last minute and vote in favor of continued discussions.
"Constantly butting heads with the Americans doesn't do any good. At some point, America's more well-meaning citizens will also start to take it personally," said Gabriel. Germany, along with the EU, has sought to take on global leadership of the issue by adopting its own vast climate protection initiatives, but Berlin itself has come under criticism in recent months for its efforts to secure generous exceptions for German industry from Brussels' ambitious new climate plan.
Last week the EU unveiled a policy package to achieve its bold goal of reducing carbon emissions within the 27 nation block to 20 percent below 1990 levels by 2020. And the EU would even be willing to make a 30 percent cut, environment officials in Brussels claim, if that were made the global target in the successor treaty to the Kyoto Protocol.
"If an international treaty foresees a worldwide emissions reduction of up to 30 percent, we are prepared to match that level of reduction," Barbara Helfferich, an EU environment spokeswoman, told SPIEGEL ONLINE this week. EU Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas did not travel to Hawaii, said Helfferich, though a number of lower level delegates did attend the conference. She described it as a chance to continue discussions that began in Bali, but said the EU did not consider the Hawaii meeting a formal opportunity to advance international climate treaty negotiations.
"It can help the UN process, but it should not distract from the UN process," said Helfferich. "That is the place in which negotiations will have to take place, and the United States has supported that UN process."
Before heading to the conference this week, the UN's chief climate official said establishing an international reduction target should be the focus of discussions in Hawaii. "It would be useful if they can zero in quite quickly on emissions," Yvo de Boer told Reuters, speaking from the headquarters of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change in Bonn, Germany.
The UN, which sponsored the Bali conference, is pushing to draft an agreement by 2009 so that a new treaty would follow seamlessly on the heels of carbon-capping Kyoto, which expires in 2012.
However, de Boer cautioned that even an international emissions reduction pact might not be enough to prevent harmful climate changes. He called on rich countries to establish a "Climate Change Marshall Plan" to help developing nations make a commitment to climate change prevention. The original US Marshall plan was established to rebuild Western European economies after the devastation of World War II.
During his final State of the Union address on Monday, Bush pledged $2 billion (€1.4 billion) to a new international fund aimed at providing funding for environmentally friendly technologies in developing countries in order to help them cut harmful CO2 emissions. Japan also recently announced a contribution of $10 billion to the fund. And Washington is expected to urge other countries at this week's meeting in Hawaii to make similar contributions.
Still, both de Boer and Gabriel said they hold little hope for a significant shift in US climate policy until Bush is out of office.
"A real breakthrough can only be expected after the American presidential election," said Gabriel.
pmm/AP/Reuters
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