US nears agreement to join climate talks
(AP)
Updated: 2005-12-10 14:31

Clinton's vice president, Al Gore, was instrumental in negotiating the treaty protocol initialed in 1997 in Kyoto, Japan — a pact that the Senate subsequently refused to ratify. When Bush, taking office, rejected Kyoto outright, he complained that China, India and other major industrializing countries were not bound by its emission controls.

The protocol's language required its member nations at this point to begin talks on presumably deeper emissions cuts for the next phase, after 2012.

Negotiations among the more than 150 nations that ratified Kyoto went on until dawn Friday and then resumed later in the day, as they hammered out final details of a plan whereby a working group would begin developing post-2012 proposals. The tentative document included no deadline for that work, but said it should be completed early enough to ensure that no gap develops after 2012.

Rubber ducks from environmental group National Environmental Trust are handed out to delegates in response to comments by U.S. chief negotiator Harlan Watson during The United Nations Climate Change Conference in Montreal December 9, 2005. Watson, who left negotiation talks overnight, was quoted as saying 'If it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, walks like a duck then it is a duck.' [Reuters]

That would guarantee an uninterrupted future for the burgeoning international "carbon market," in which carbon reductions achieved by one company can be sold to another to help it meet its target.

At the same time, the host Canadians tried to draw in the Americans, Kyoto outsiders, on a parallel track, under the nonbinding 1992 U.N. climate treaty. Canada's proposals offered vague, noncommittal language by which Washington would join only in a "dialogue" to "explore" cooperative action.

U.S. negotiators repeatedly rejected these efforts, though remaining in discussion with Canada's environment minister, Stephane Dion, president of the conference.

The Americans also repeatedly pointed to $3-billion-a-year U.S. government spending on research and development of energy-saving technologies as a demonstration of U.S. efforts to combat climate change.

In a news conference after his speech, Clinton suggested the Europeans and others not force "targets" on Washington, but look for agreement on specific energy-saving projects.

"If we just keep working with the administration, we'll find some specific things we can do that are consistent with the targets," he said, but "without embracing the targets."

Most of the conference was devoted to the nuts-and-bolts work of the climate pacts.

Environmentalists were pleased at agreements in such areas as how to quantify gas emissions and how to penalize nations that do not meet Kyoto targets.

Others expressed disappointment, meanwhile, there was not more progress here in such areas as helping finance developing countries' adaptation to damaging climate change.

As for the U.S. position, many here seemed resigned to waiting for a political change in Washington.

"It's such a pity the United States is still very much unwilling to join the international community, to have a multilateral effort to deal with climate change," said the leader of the African group of nations here, Kenya's Emily Ojoo Massawa.