Bush won't change climate policy, chief negotiator says
08 Nov 2006 15:38:21 GMT Source: Reuters
By Alister Doyle, Environment Correspondent NAIROBI, Nov 8 (Reuters) - President George W. Bush's chief climate negotiator dashed European hopes of a U.S. shift to tougher curbs on global warming on Wednesday after the Republicans lost control of the House of Representatives. "I do not see any change in our policy. We feel very comfortable," U.S. senior climate negotiator Harlan Watson told Reuters during 189-nation U.N. talks in Nairobi on ways to fight global warming. "The president...feels very comfortable that we are making progress and he sees no reason to change," he said of U.S. goals of slowing, but not capping, rising emissions of greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels. The Democrats swept Bush's Republicans out of power in the U.S. House of Representatives in Tuesday's election and moved to the brink of control in the Senate, the upper house, where they led in two tight races they need for a majority. The results prompted European backers of the U.N.'s Kyoto Protocol at the Nov. 6-17 U.N. talks to speculate that Bush would come under pressure to ease opposition to Kyoto-style caps on emissions. "We are not giving up hope," said Artur Runge-Metzger, the head of the European Commission's climate unit. "This is a signal maybe that there might be changes. "It might be easier to work with the U.S. on a future framework when it comes to future climate policies," he said. The United States, the world's biggest source of greenhouse gases, and Australia are the only industrialised countries outside the U.N.'s Kyoto Protocol which obliges 35 nations to cut emissions mainly from burning fossil fuels. Watson said that U.S. climate policies were more to do with energy policy and regional differences than party splits. "It's not necessarily a Democrat and Republican issue," he said. SENATE OPPOSED Bush pulled out of Kyoto in 2001, arguing that its caps would cost U.S. jobs and that it wrongly omitted developing nations from a first period of caps to 2012. The U.S. Senate voted 95-0 against Kyoto's principles in 1997. Most of Bush's industrial allies see Kyoto as a small first step towards fighting a global warming that might cause rising sea levels, more droughts, storms and heatwaves that would batter the world economy if left unchecked. U.S. emissions in 2004 were 16 percent over 1990 levels and are set to rise further under Bush's policy of voluntary curbs on the amount of carbon dioxide emitted per dollar of economic output. Kyoto's goal is to cut emissions to five percent below 1990 levels by 2008-12. Watson predicted that Bush, who has said the United States must break an "addiction" to oil, would keep up his focus on energy policy. He also said there were many bipartisan areas of concern over fossil fuels. "We have to worry about energy security, that's bipartisan. We want to reduce our dependence on foreign sources of energy." "There's strong bipartisan support for more use of renewables, biofuels...there's a broad consensus on the important role of advanced technologies," he added.
