Climate talks near Kyoto renewal road map

By Mary Milliken and David Fogarty

MONTREAL (Reuters) – Major industrial nations neared accord
on a vague road map to extend the Kyoto Protocol at U.N.
climate talks on Thursday but Washington showed no sign of
budging from plans to pursue its own strategy on global
warming.

Negotiators at the November 28-December 9 talks also agreed
to speed investments in clean energy projects in the Third
World and set rules to ensure compliance with Kyoto, meant as a
first step to prevent catastrophic climate changes from rising
temperatures.

Delegates said ministers from more than 90 nations were
close to agreeing on a negotiating plan — without a firm
timetable — to extend Kyoto beyond 2012. The pact now obliges
about 40 rich nations to cut emissions from burning fossil
fuels.

“Under the (Kyoto) Protocol, the European Union and the
G-77 have agreed on procedures to negotiate developed
countries’ undertakings in post-2012,” French Environment
Minister Nelly Olin said.

The Group of 77 represents developing countries.

“It will be formally agreed tomorrow,” Australian
Environment Minister Ian Campbell told Reuters.

The United States, the world’s biggest emitter of
greenhouse gases, and Australia attend meetings of the
157-member Kyoto pact only as observers. They pulled out,
saying it would be too costly for their economies.

Kyoto is a tiny first step in a drive to brake a warming
most scientists say will lead to wrenching changes such as more
powerful storms, desertification, extinction of species and
rising sea levels.

A draft text of the Kyoto plan seen by Reuters omitted any
timetable for negotiations. Environmentalists and businesses
have called for an end to talks by 2008 to give them time to
plan investments in clean energy like solar or wind power.

NO TIMETABLES

The text said rich nations “shall aim” to agree “as early
as possible and in time to ensure that there is no gap between
the first and second commitment periods.” Kyoto’s first period
demands emissions cuts of 5.2 percent below 1990 levels by
2008-12.

Other delegates said the Kyoto parties would hold off from
formally agreeing to the text in hopes other nations —
including the United States — would agree to a parallel set of
two-year talks on new ways to fight climate change.

But environmentalists said Washington was threatening to
block the launch of any wider discussions, upset by criticism
from Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin on Thursday. Martin
urged Washington to do more to prevent global warming and
“listen to the conscience of the world.”

“It’s an example of how desperate the Americans are when
they blame the prime minister for their intransigence,” said
Jennifer Morgan, climate expert with the WWF group, an
environalist group. U.S. officials were not immediately
available for comment.

U.S. President George W. Bush has denounced Kyoto as an
economic straitjacket and is promoting big investments in new
technologies like hydrogen and a plan to cooperate with China,
India, Japan, Australia and South Korea.

Former U.S. President Bill Clinton, whose administration
negotiated Kyoto in 1997 but never submitted it to a skeptical
Senate for ratification, was scheduled to visit Montreal on
Friday to address environmentalists.

Negotiators earlier agreed to streamline a plan that might
channel $100 billion to projects such as hydropower in Honduras
or wind energy in China to help cut the use of fossil fuels
blamed for warming the planet.

Under the program, rich nations can invest in clean energy
projects, such as generating electricity by burning the waste
from sugar cane in Brazil, and claim credits back home for
reducing world emissions of greenhouse gases.

Under the rules approved to ensure Kyoto compliance, any
country that overshoots its targets will have to make up the
shortfall and an extra 30 percent penalty in the next period.

A group of protesters sang revised versions of hits by the
late former Beatle and peace activist John Lennon on the 25th
anniversary of his murder in New York to urge wider action.

“We all live in a carbon-intensive world,” they chanted to
the tune of the Beatles hit “Yellow Submarine.”