(Xinhua)
Updated: 2008-01-31 21:51

However, the Bush administration will still stick to its familiar positions -- some of them are globally unpopular -- on how the country should deal with the issue, since it will fall to the next US president to sign off on the next global climate agreement.

While the United States joined more than 180 other countries in Bali in agreeing to develop a new treaty to replace the Kyoto Protocol, its negotiators refused to bow to pressure from the European Union (EU) and others to impose mandatory caps on greenhouse gas emissions.

Voluntary, not mandatory, caps have been President George W. Bush's unwavering stance since he took office in 2001, and US officials held firm to that position in Hawaii.

The Bush administration is not ashamed of being the only developed nation staying out of the Kyoto Protocol and the accusation that it is resisting mandatory pollution reduction goals is not "accurate," Boyden Gray, the US special envoy to the EU, told a press briefing here Wednesday.

Commenting on the EU's commitment to cutting greenhouse gas emissions,  Gray insisted that the US government is doing more "aggressively" in environmental protection, citing the energy bill signed by Bush last month.

The bill mandates the first major increase in vehicle fuel efficiency standards over three decades.

One idea the Bush administration is pushing in Hawaii is to increase worldwide funding of technologies aimed at curbing greenhouse gas emissions.

But analysts said the United States risks international embarrassment if its climate ideas are found wanting by the major nations attending the Hawaii meeting.

In Bali, the EU threatened to boycott the Hawaii summit unless the US government agreed to take part in a new round of global climate talks.

Other countries booed the United States during the negotiations, and representatives of the island country of Papua New Guinea publicly pleaded to the world's biggest superpower to either lead or get out of the way.

Furthermore, former US Vice President Al Gore complained, "My own country, the United States, is principally responsible for obstructing progress here in Bali."

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