U.S. unveils climate pact, Kyoto alternative

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Bush administration, which is
pushing alternatives to the Kyoto treaty on global warming,
unveiled a six-nation pact on Wednesday that promotes the use
of technology to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

The deal between the United States, Japan, Australia,
China, India and South Korea will build on existing bilateral
agreements on technology sharing. It includes no Kyoto-style
caps on emissions.

President Bush said in a statement the Asia-Pacific
partnership, which will be formally introduced in the Laotion
capital Vientiane, would address global warming while promoting
economic development.

But 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.”

The United States, which creates the biggest share of
greenhouse emissions, and Australia are the only developed
nations outside Kyoto. But Japan, China, India and South Korea
have ratified Kyoto, which demands cuts in greenhouse emissions
by 5.2 percent below 1990 levels by 2008-2012.

“As far as I can tell, there’s really nothing new here,”
said Jeff Fielder, an analyst at the New York-based Natural
Resources Defense Council. He said that the bilateral
agreements already served the purpose of technology sharing but
said companies will not have an incentive to deploy it without
a strong signal sent by mandatory limits.

“I think this is aimed at complicating the Montreal talks,”
Fielder added.

Jim Connaughton, chairman of the White House Council on
Environmental Quality, said there was no attempt to undermine
Kyoto.

“With respect to the Kyoto framework it will complement the
obligations that that has for some countries. It will not
replace the Kyoto protocol. The Kyoto protocol remains in
place,” Connaughton told reporters in a conference call.

He said that the countries in the Asia-Pacific pact
together represent about 50 percent of the world’s greenhouse
gas emissions and a “substantial” portion of the world’s gross
domestic product.

Australian Environment Minister Ian Campbell said the
countries had been quietly working on the pact for months.

“It’s quite clear the Kyoto protocol won’t get the world to
where it wants to go … We have got to find something that
works better — Australia is working on that with partners
around the world,” Campbell told reporters.

U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick will join
with other diplomats for the Vientiane unveiling.

The process will get off the ground when Secretary State of
State Condoleezza Rice and Secretary of Energy Sam Bodman meet
their counterparts from the other signatory countries later
this year.

Bush believes Kyoto would threaten the U.S. economy even
though many of his allies see it as a vital step to brake a
rise in temperatures they fear could trigger more floods,
storms, lift sea levels and drive thousands of species to
extinction.

Some environmentalists said they worried one motivation for
Washington was to lure China and India away from the Kyoto
talks.

Greenpeace climate policy director Steve Sawyer said the
pact might be “a benign technology agreement” but “on the other
hand, this could be the first foray by the Americans and
Australians to knock Kyoto on the head.”

The Kyoto protocol, first agreed in 1997, came into force
in February after Russia ratified it.

As economies expand, the world is consuming more energy and
is producing more greenhouse gas emissions, particularly carbon
dioxide from burning fossil fuels such as coal in power plants
and petrol in cars.