United States President George Bush was coming under strong pressure from the European Union and Japan on Wednesday night to sign up to a G8 target for cutting greenhouse gas emissions after the White House’s pledge to work through the United Nations on climate change failed to satisfy its summit partners.
With officials from the G8 meeting late into the night in an attempt to secure a deal to check global warming, Bush made it clear on Wednesday that the US opposed plans for a specific climate change cut to be agreed in Heiligendamm.
The three biggest European nations at the talks — Germany, France and Britain — were presenting a united front on climate change on Wednesday night, in the hope that Bush could be persuaded to agree either to a 50% cut in greenhouse gas emissions from their 1990 level by 2050 or to limit the increase in global temperatures to two degrees centigrade above their pre-industrial level.
British sources said the US saw the need to cut greenhouse gas emissions by about 50% but was reluctant to commit itself to a target at the summit unless it could be assured that the leading developing nations, particularly China and India, would be part of the deal. America’s criticism of the 1997 Kyoto agreement, which expires in 2011, was that it excluded the major developing nations.
Environmental groups attacked the US for its hardline approach. Greenpeace director John Sauven said: ”It took George Bush precisely one week to prove his critics right by slipping back into his default position of blocking action on climate change.
”Binding international targets are an indispensable weapon in the fight to keep temperature rises below two degrees, but Bush would rather we cross our fingers and hope for a techno-fix. The rest of the G8 should look beyond the White House and find partners in progressive states like California, where action by responsible politicians is leaving the president as isolated at home as he is abroad.”
British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, and Nicolas Sarkozy, the French President, were still optimistic that Bush would agree to wording in the summit communiqué that would call for ”substantial” cuts in emissions even if the US refused to set a specific target.
The European members of the G8 were encouraged by the olive branch offered by Bush on Wednesday — a promise that the US wanted to negotiate a multilateral agreement to Kyoto.
At a bilateral meeting with Merkel, Bush said he had a ”strong desire” to work with her ”on a post-Kyoto agreement about how we can achieve major objectives”.
Merkel called their lunchtime talks before the start of the summit ”a very good conversation and very good debate” — but acknowledged afterwards that ”there are a few areas we will continue to work on”.
Blair believes it is significant that the US has now acknowledged for the first time that global warming is a serious problem, and accepts the White House’s argument that China and India must be included.
In an interview with the Guardian on Wednesday, he insisted he could persuade Bush to agree to sign up to a ”substantial cut” in greenhouse gases, but acknowledged that ”failure is if there is not an agreement that leads to a global deal with substantial reduction in emissions at the heart of it”.
James Connaughton, Bush’s climate change spokesperson, said an agreement was ”coming together, almost done. There’s going to be a strong agreement on a way forward.”
Ahead of the G8, Bush said each country should set its own goals on improving energy security, reducing air pollution and cutting greenhouse gases in the next 10 to 20 years. ”The United States can serve as a bridge to help find a solution,” he said.
At the G8 summit on Thursday
- Blair meets Bush for breakfast
- First working session on macro economics
- ”Family photo” lunchtime; G8 meet members of the J8, the youth eight
- Working lunch on international affairs
- Afternoon session on climate change
- Working dinner likely to revisit climate change, and text of communiqué – Guardian Unlimited Â