China Challenges U.S. to Make Deeper Emissions Cuts for Climate

The first United Nations General Assembly meeting on climate change ended today with China leading the world's poorest nations in challenging the U.S. to make deeper cuts in greenhouse gas emissions.

Talks on new steps to combat climate change, set to begin on the Indonesian island of Bali in December, should be held "within the framework of the Kyoto Protocol," Chinese Deputy Ambassador Liu Zhenmin told envoys of UN member governments. "Developed countries need to adopt policies that rise above short-sighted and narrow business interests," Liu said.

President George W. Bush, while agreeing to work under UN auspices, has rejected the Kyoto Protocol, citing potential damage to the U.S. economy. The treaty requires its 35 participating countries to cut their carbon emissions from 1990 levels by 5.2 percent by 2012, when the accord expires.

Zalmay Khalilzad, the U.S. ambassador to the UN, said in his remarks to the General Assembly that the Bush administration was committed to "stabilizing the concentration of greenhouse gas in the atmosphere." He didn't mention the Kyoto treaty.

The three-day General Assembly session reflected the determination of Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to make the UN more prominent in addressing climate change. Ban said when the meeting opened on July 30 that the "time has come for decisive action on a global scale."

Bali Talks

The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reported in February that global warming was "very likely" caused by humans and that the world's temperature might rise by 3 degrees Celsius in this century unless mitigating measures are taken.

The UN Security Council held its first meeting on global warming in April, and Ban is asking world leaders to meet in New York on the issue before the opening of the next General Assembly session in September. He will seek commitments to begin the process in Bali of negotiating a treaty to extend Kyoto.

Ban said talks need to begin in Bali and conclude by 2009 because it would take three years after that for a new treaty to be ratified.

"The challenge for Bali is to put in place a negotiating agreement that the U.S. will be part of," Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, the parent of the Kyoto Protocol, told reporters.

"It is going to be a difficult process, but U.S. policy is evolving very rapidly," British Ambassador Emyr Jones Parry said, adding that "the world is motivated on the issue in a way it hasn't been."

U.S. Stance

Khalilzad said there was an emerging consensus that "human activity is a contributing factor" in climate change and that the U.S. was committed to an agreement that would "complement" the UN framework convention.

During a summit in June of leaders from the Group of Eight industrialized nations, Bush brokered an agreement that put U.S. efforts to address greenhouse gas emissions under UN auspices. The U.S. will convene a meeting of the G-8 before Bali to "set a long-term goal for reducing greenhouse gases as well as establishing near- to mid-term national emissions roadmaps and commitments," Khalilzad said.

Mukhdoom Hayat, Pakistan's environment minister, spoke for the organization of the world's 130 poorest nations in saying "lack of fulfillment of commitments" in the Kyoto Protocol was the "most formidable challenge" in combating climate change.

"The luxury emissions of rich countries should be restricted while the emissions of subsistence and development emissions of poor countries should be accommodated," China's Liu said.

China overtook the U.S. last year as the world's biggest emitter of carbon dioxide, the greenhouse gas blamed for the bulk of global warming, according a report in June by the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency, a policy group that advises the Dutch government.