A six-nation post-Kyoto pact to fight Global Warming

The United States and five Asian and Pacific nations, Australia, China, India, Japan, and South Korea have agreed to work together for a better tomorrow in a wake to build new energy technology as a way to reduce dangerous emissions that pollute the air and warm the atmosphere.

Negotiations on the partnership deal have been in the works for five or six months. White House officials see the partnership as an important step in setting up a system to help emerging industrial countries produce cleaner energy and slow the growth of climate-changing emissions, especially carbon from fossil fuels.

Unlike the Kyoto Protocol that mandate country targets for curbing emissions, it promotes the use of alternative, cleaner energy sources. The countries involved accounted for about 50 per cent of global emissions of greenhouse gases, which trap heat in the atmosphere and are blamed for global warming, seen as one of the world’s greatest environmental dangers.

One of its goals is to battle pollution in a way that does not seriously hamper economic growth, one of the objections Mr Bush raised about the Kyoto Protocol when he announced he would not submit the treaty to the US Senate for ratification.

Mr. Bush based his opposition to the Kyoto Protocol largely on the fact that it did not mandate emission reduction targets for developing countries. And White House officials made clear that bringing India and China into this technology partnership was considered crucial.

The United States is the world’s biggest producer of greenhouse gases, with China just behind. Environmentalists have repeatedly called on President Bush to back Kyoto and its mandatory emission curbs, and their early reaction to word of the partnership agreement ranged from skeptical to hostile.

Environmentalists criticized it as an attempt by Washington to create a distraction ahead of U.N. talks in November in Montreal that will focus on how to widen Kyoto to include developing nations after 2012. The approach of looking to technology for solutions to global warming was emphasized by Bush at the Group of Eight summit in Scotland when he called for a “post-Kyoto era.”

Jim Connaughton, head of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, stressed the agreement provides the six countries with the ability to share ideas and resources including “sharing programs, sharing dollars and sharing opportunities for private investment.”

The commitments under the deal “don’t require enforcement, what they require is investment” from the private sector, as well as sharing technologies that increase energy efficiency and cut pollution.

He emphasized that this agreement is not the U.S. alternative to the Kyoto Protocol, but will complement the international pact on climate change. “It will not replace the Kyoto Protocol. The Kyoto Protocol remains in place,” he said.

Australian Prime Minister John Howard agreed to join the US initiative when he met President George W Bush in Washington last week. Howard also held a meeting with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who was also visiting the US capital last week.

Australia - on a per capita basis the world’s worst polluter - won’t sign the Kyoto Protocol because it wants to continue to rely on its large coal reserves for most of its electricity generation. The Australian government has set no targets for shifting away from its reliance on coal for power generation.

Australian Environment Minister Ian Campbell said earlier: “Australia is, and I reassure the Australian people, working on something that is more effective post-Kyoto”.

The UN’s Kyoto Protocol requires industrialised countries to trim emissions of carbon dioxide, the byproduct of burning oil, gas and coal, by a deadline of 2010.

“This new results-oriented partnership will allow our nations to develop and accelerate deployment of cleaner, more efficient energy technologies,” US President George W Bush said in a statement released by the White House.

“I have directed Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Secretary of Energy Sam Bodman to meet with their counterparts this fall (northern autumn) to carry forward our new partnership and provide direction for our joint work,” Mr Bush said.

The plan, which does not set precise new emissions targets or timetables, will be unveiled formally by Deputy US Secretary of State Robert Zoellick at 1330 Thursday AEST) at a regional summit in Laos.

When asked if there were plans to ultimately expand the partnership, Mr. Connaughton noted that it will be a challenge just to bring these six together in a coordinated effort. “If we started too large it would get bogged down in administration rather than action,” he said.