[Marxism] "Bush" Fire Fuels Global Warming

[Sukla Sen]

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-UN-Climate-Summit.html?hp

September 25, 2007
World Leaders Meet for UN Climate Talks
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Filed at 1:07 a.m. ET

UNITED NATIONS (AP) -- With tales of rising seas and
talk of human solidarity, world leaders at the first
United Nations climate summit sought Monday to put new
urgency into global talks to reduce global-warming
emissions.

What's needed is ''action, action, action,''
California's environmentalist governor, Arnold
Schwarzenegger, told the assembled presidents and
premiers.

The Bush administration showed no sign, however, that
it would reverse its stand against mandatory emission
cuts endorsed by 175 other nations. Some expressed
fears the White House, with its own forum later this
week, would launch talks rivaling the U.N. climate
treaty negotiations.

President Bush didn't take part in the day's sessions,
which drew more than 80 national leaders, but attended
a small dinner Monday evening, a gathering of key
climate players hosted by Secretary-General Ban
Ki-moon.

Ban set the day's theme in his opening address,
declaring that ''the time for doubt has passed'' on
the issue of global warming. At the day's end, he said
he believed the scores of speeches showed a ''major
political commitment'' to success in the global talks.

Throughout, in remarks clearly aimed at Washington,
the U.N. chief described the U.N. negotiating umbrella
as ''the only forum'' where the issues can be decided.

Ban organized the one-day summit to build momentum for
December's annual climate treaty conference in Bali,
Indonesia, when Europe, Japan and others hope to
initiate talks for an emissions-reduction agreement to
succeed the Kyoto Protocol in 2012.

The 175-nation Kyoto pact, which the U.S. rejects,
requires 36 industrial nations to reduce carbon
dioxide and other heat-trapping gases. It set an
average target of a 5 percent cut below 1990 levels by
2012 for emissions from power plants and other
industrial, agricultural and transportation sources.

Advocates for emissions reductions say a breakthrough
is needed at Bali to ensure an uninterrupted
transition from the 1997 Kyoto pact to a new,
deeper-cutting regime, something that almost certainly
would require a change in the U.S. position.

The chief U.N. climate scientist, Rajendra Pachauri,
told the summit of the mounting evidence of global
warming's impact, including the accelerating rise in
sea levels as oceans expand from heat and the runoff
of melting land ice.

''The time is up for inaction,'' he said.

A Pacific islander, President Emanuel Mori of the
Federated States of Micronesia, told the summit that
encroaching seas are already destroying crops,
contaminating wells and eating away at his islands'
beaches.

''How does one explain to the inhabitants that their
plight is caused by human activities done in faraway
lands?'' he asked.

The United States has long been the world's biggest
emitter of greenhouse gases.

Bush objects that Kyoto-style mandates would damage
the U.S. economy and says they should be imposed on
fast-growing poorer countries like China and India in
addition to developed nations. He instead is urging
industry to cut emissions voluntarily and is
emphasizing research on clean-energy technology as one
answer.

On Thursday and Friday, Bush will host his own
Washington climate meeting, limited to 16 ''major
emitter'' countries, including China and India, the
first in a series of U.S.-led gatherings expected to
focus on those themes.

''The Washington meeting is a distraction,'' Hans
Verolme, climate campaigner for the Worldwide Fund for
Nature, told reporters. U.S. leaders ''need to show
they are serious and implement domestic legislation to
reduce emissions,'' he said.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, speaking at the
summit, put the Washington meetings in a different
light, describing them as designed ''to support and
help advance the ongoing U.N. discussion.''

Late Monday, U.N. chief Ban was asked by reporters
about Bush's position during the dinner discussions.
''He made it quite clear that what he's going to do is
help the United Nations effort,'' he replied.

Japan's envoy, former Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori,
said Tokyo believes the separate U.S. talks will
''contribute to achieving consensus'' in the U.N.
process, in which all agree that China, India and
others must eventually accept emission limits. German
Chancellor Angela Merkel said the Washington sessions
show ''the Americans are back in the climate
process.''

But Japan and others, to one degree or another,
stressed that all nations -- including the United
States -- must accept emission targets.

To try to spur global negotiations, the European
Union, which must reduce emissions by 8 percent under
Kyoto, has committed to a further reduction of at
least 20 percent by 2020.

Speaking for the EU, French President Nicolas Sarkozy
told Monday's summit that ''all the developed
countries and the largest emitters'' must commit to a
50 percent reduction by 2050. He also said the U.N.
negotiating process is the only ''efficient and
legitimate framework.''

Schwarzenegger told delegates that U.S. states are
embracing emissions caps even if the Bush
administration isn't. California's Republican governor
and Democrat-led legislature have approved a law
requiring the state's industries to reduce greenhouse
gases by an estimated 25 percent by 2020.

''California is moving the United States beyond debate
and doubt to action,'' Schwarzenegger said. ''What we
are doing is changing the dynamic.''

In a summit luncheon speech, former Vice President Al
Gore, a leading climate campaigner, painted a dire
picture of changes already under way because of global
warming, including last week's scientific report that
the Arctic ice cap this summer shrank to a
record-small size.

''We cannot continue a slow pace,'' Gore said,
proposing that heads of state meet every three months
beginning in 2008 to ensure the world is doing all it
can to meet the threat.

------

Associated Press writers Sarah DiLorenzo and Alexandra
Olson contributed to this report. 


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