US stance on developing nations
The Bush administration is working towards a new goal for helping developing nations to reduce their carbon emissions: a US plan to succeed the Kyoto Protocol in 2012 is hoping to include some of the world’s largest emitters in a scheme forcing them to try to reduce emissions as far as possible in exchange for help in trade and technology. Failing to reduce emissions would effectively result in economic and trading sanctions. Meanwhile developed nations would be undergoing “more-formal regulatory programs”.
A two-day meeting at the State Department is set to be held on Thursday with ministers from the 17 countries that contribute to 90% of the world’s emissions. The meeting is expected to be the “first of five or six meetings to develop a new process that can be agreed upon by the end of next year”, which will include developing nations.
This article in the Wall Street Journal outlines proposals from different groups in America. They are all similar to include less leniency to developing nations, since we need a global effort to curb global warming.
“The Bush administration hopes to encourage a variety of reductions by developing countries that could supplement more-formal regulatory programs by industrial nations, including the U.S. …
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Nobuo Tanaka, executive director of the Paris-based International Energy Agency, said that during this week’s meeting in Washington he will outline “feasible” steps that all countries can take to quickly reduce emissions.
They include phasing out the incandescent light bulb and requiring computers, television sets and other appliances to use less power while they are turned off. Annual electricity reductions from the two steps, he estimates, could equal the output of 100 average-size power plants.
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The Bush Administration … expects this week’s major-emitters talks to be the first of five or six meetings to develop a new process that can be agreed upon by the end of next year. James Connaughton, chairman of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, said one goal will be to develop a uniform system for measuring each nation’s output of greenhouse gases.
New systems of measurement, which count carbon dioxide from the destruction of forests and other land-use policies along with emissions from burning fossil fuels, show China, Indonesia, Brazil and Malaysia among the globe’s top 10 emitters.”