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World Needs Kyoto Climate Pact: Scientist

Posted on: Monday, 10 October 2005, 07:15 CDT

SINGAPORE -- The world must stick with the Kyoto Protocol on greenhouse gas emissions and the United States needs to show leadership in limiting climate change instead of being an obstacle, a top British scientist said on Monday.

Officials from 150 nations meet in Canada next month to discuss how to take the Kyoto pact beyond 2012, when its first phase ends.

The pact, which came into force this year, obliges only developed nations to meet emissions targets while developing nations, including big polluters China and India, are excluded until at least 2012.

"We are faced with a situation in which the United States is not prepared to get on board Kyoto, so taking it forward from there is difficult," said Sir David King, chief scientific adviser for the British government.

President George W. Bush pulled the United States, the world's top polluter, out of Kyoto in 2001 saying that emissions targets could threaten economic growth and that excluding large developing nations didn't make sense.

Australia refused to ratify the pact for the same reasons, while India does not believe setting targets is the right solution.

Under Kyoto, agreed by governments at a 1997 U.N. conference in the Japanese city, the amount of greenhouse gases emitted by developed countries should be cut by 5.2 percent of 1990 levels during the five-year period 2008-2012.

But many countries are already well behind their targets and refusal by the United States and Australia delayed the pact finally coming into force.

Asked if he believed such disagreements meant Kyoto needed to be scrapped or amended, King said: "No, I don't."

"I think the White House is keen to push the whole technology debate forward without putting forward any global emissions plan. I don't see within the U.S. something that will bring global action into play," he told Reuters on the sidelines of a climate change forum in Singapore.

The United States, Australia and four Asian nations including China, unveiled their own pact in July that focused on harnessing cleaner energy technology to curb greenhouse emissions.

STICK WITH KYOTO

This pact, dubbed "beyond Kyoto," was described as complimentary to Kyoto but the different approaches in curbing emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases by big polluters could bog down the Montreal talks.

Last week Britain played down hopes of a breakthrough and host Canada was equally gloomy.

But King said nations should stick with Kyoto.

"What I believe is that first of all we need to get Kyoto up and running and then to go to Kyoto plus," he said, adding that emissions trading is crucial to force utilities and energy companies to become more efficient.

"I think that is absolutely crucial and it would be wrong to abandon Kyoto," he said.

Asked the best way to bring China and India into the second phase of Kyoto, he said it was crucial to recognize that both countries were heavily dependent on their own coal reserves.

"We need to recognize that and in recognizing that we therefore need to be working with them on technologies such as carbon capture and storage, on alternative energy and demonstrating the idea is not to cut their economic growth."

He hoped Montreal would yield a breakthrough or at least demonstrate a way forward.

"The point is that as we move forward, the seriousness of the issue is becoming more apparent and everyone realizes it's in all of our interests to get some agreement out of this. That has to be crucial to the process."

Crucial, too, was the United States' role.

"I think it's very important that America finds a way to play a similar leadership role," he said pointing to Britain's commitment to cut emissions by 60 percent by 2050.

Source: REUTERS/By David Fogarty

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