[PAA-Discuss] U.S. Rebuffs Germany on Greenhouse Gas Cuts

[zappa2004]

BlankU.S. Rebuffs Germany on Greenhouse Gas Cuts
By HELENE COOPER and ANDREW C. REVKIN
Published: May 26, 2007
WASHINGTON, May 25 — The United States has rejected Germany’s proposal for
deep long-term cuts in greenhouse gas emissions, setting the stage for a
battle that will pit President Bush against his European allies at next
month’s meeting of the world’s richest countries.

In unusually harsh language, Bush administration negotiators took issue with
the German draft of the communiqué for the meeting of the Group of 8
industrialized nations, complaining that the proposal “crosses multiple red
lines in terms of what we simply cannot agree to.”

“We have tried to tread lightly, but there is only so far we can go given
our fundamental opposition to the German position,” the American response
said.

Germany, backed by Britain and now Japan, has proposed cutting global
greenhouse gas emissions by 50 percent by 2050. Chancellor Angela Merkel of
Germany, who will be the host of the meeting in the Baltic Sea resort of
Heiligendamm next month, has been pushing hard to get the Group of 8 to take
significant action on climate change.

It had been a foregone conclusion that the Western European members of the
Group of 8 — Germany, Italy, France and Britain — would back the reductions.
But on Thursday, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan threw his lot in with
the Europeans, and proposed cutting carbon emissions as part of a new
framework to replace the Kyoto Protocol, whose mandatory caps on gases end
in 2012.

“The Kyoto Protocol was the first, concrete step for the human race to
tackle global warming, but we must admit that it has limitations,” Mr. Abe
said at a conference in Tokyo. He specifically called on the United States
and China, the biggest producers of carbon emissions, to lead the fight
against global warming.

The United States has refused to ratify the Kyoto Protocol because of
concerns about damage to the American economy. Bush administration officials
have also balked because China and India are not part of it.

The push back by the Bush administration over the German proposal has left
many European diplomats furious. “The United States, on this issue, is
virtually isolated,” one European diplomat said on condition of anonymity
under diplomatic rules, and then added, “with the exception of other big
polluters.”

Both Ms. Merkel and Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain have, in private
talks with President Bush, pushed for the United States to agree to the
European proposal.

Kristen A. Hellmer, a spokeswoman for the White House on environmental
issues, said: “All the G-8 countries are committed to pursuing an agreement.
We just come at it from different perspectives.”

A clearly disappointed Ms. Merkel, speaking to Germany’s lower house of
Parliament on Thursday, sought to lower expectations that Mr. Bush would
agree to the more ambitious agenda sought by Europe and Japan. “I can say
quite openly that, today, I don’t know whether we will succeed in that at
Heiligendamm,” she said.

The United States, with less than 5 percent of the world’s population,
produces between a fifth and a quarter of the world’s emissions, according
to government data.

Emissions in Europe and the United States have been slowing of late, with a
slight drop in the United States in 2006. But much more growth is forecast
by various agencies on both sides of the Atlantic and particularly in Asia.

Helene Cooper reported from Washington, and Andrew C. Revkin from New York.




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