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G-8 Conference Tackles Global Warming Treaty
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A hot subject here has been Zimbabwe, with Bush and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown promoting a tough new round of sanctions aimed at dislodging President Robert Mugabe, whose campaign of intimidation led many countries to reject his recent reelection. The G-8 communique questioned the legitimacy of the Mugabe government and promised possible "financial and other measures against those individuals responsible for violence."
The statement did not use the word "sanctions," an apparent nod to African countries and Russia, which have question the utility of sanctions. At U.N. headquarters in New York on Tuesday, Russian Ambassador Vitaly I. Churkin suggested that his country may veto any Security Council sanctions, on the grounds that Zimbabwe's crisis does not present a threat to international security.
But it was global warming that attracted the most attention here, in large part as a test of how far Bush would go on the issue before he leaves office in less than seven months.
The summit leaders left unaddressed several key issues, such as the baseline for calculating a 50 percent reduction in greenhouse-gas emissions. Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda, the host of the meeting, told reporters the baseline will be current levels of emissions, but European officials said that the matter must still be negotiated and that they prefer the baseline to be 1990 levels, necessitating deeper emissions cuts.
The uncertainty angered environmental groups. Alden Meyer, who is tracking the climate change issue here for the Union of Concerned Scientists, described the statement as a "missed opportunity," and noted that the United States did not budge from its position that its midterm goal for 2025 will be to halt the growth of greenhouse-gas emissions, not cut them.
In general, European countries favor ambitious midterm and long-term emissions-reduction targets. The United States, joined to varying degrees by Canada and Russia, has been wary of setting what it calls unrealistic targets.
One reason Bush cited for staying out of the Kyoto Protocol was that it exempted developing countries from emissions cuts. Daniel M. Price, one of the White House negotiators at this year's G-8 summit, said the president is making progress in bringing those countries into a new climate change treaty.
"The G-8 declaration is a significant contribution both to the U.N. negotiations, as well as to the major economies process," Price said. "Much work lies ahead, but right now we've got the right countries around the table, not only around the G-8 table but, more importantly, around the broader major economies table."
Staff writer Colum Lynch at the United Nations contributed to this report.
