Global warming talks eye U.S.

[cal04]

Host Canada urged a wider fight against global warming at the start of 189-country talks on Monday that will try to enlist the United States and poor nations in U.N.-led schemes to fight climate change beyond 2012. "Let us set our sights on a more effective, more inclusive long-term approach to climate change," Canadian Environment Minister Stephane Dion told the opening of the U.N. conference in Montreal, which lasts until December 9.

"More action is required now," Dion told delegates at the talks, likely to involve up to 10,000 representatives of governments, environmental groups and businesses, charged with working out how to limit emissions of heat-trapping gases from fossil fuels. The talks will start mapping out what to do after the U.N.'s Kyoto Protocol, a first step by about 40 industrial nations to curb emissions, runs out in 2012. Negotiations on a successor could take several years. The Montreal session included actors and video images showing the risks of a changing climate -- including more frequent hurricanes, ice storms, desertification, locust swarms, forest fires, floods and melting ice caps.

Dion said climate change was the single most important environmental issue facing the world today. He did not mention Washington by name but the United States, the world's biggest polluter, and Australia have pulled out of Kyoto, denouncing its caps on emissions as an economic straitjacket.


Apart from the United States and Australia, Kyoto excludes poor nations, such as China and India, from the first set of targets. Their emissions are growing but far lower per capita than those of industrial nations. "We have an enormous task in front of us," said Argentine Environment Minister Gines Gonzalez Garcia. He said big nations should take the lead and "significantly reduce" their emissions. Kyoto backers are supposed to cut their emissions by 5.2 percent below 1990 levels by 2008-2012.

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[ixion]

1. I wasn't aware it excluded China and India...

I think they should be included as well.

[bbinacan]

2. I have a problem with this statement

"Apart from the United States and Australia, Kyoto excludes poor nations, such as China and India, from the first set of targets. Their emissions are growing but far lower per capita than those of industrial nations."

The standard should not be per capita but on total output of a nation.

[PSPS]

3. That's a bad idea

Growing economies, like China's, could expand only with a per-capita standard. If, as you suggest, such a limit were "per nation," you'd have two issues to deal with:

1. How to assign a value of emissions to a particular nation

2. How to avoid creating a market of trading emission limits between countries. Otherwise, polluting industries would simply relocate to those countries with unused limits.

[bbinacan]

4. You make a good point, but

I don't see how it could be done differently.

[rodeodance]

5. I think we have to start somewhere. these exlusions are an excuse for

Bushco to reject the agreement.

[bbinacan]

6. I understand your point but

We are losing jobs to China and India. I'd rather they stay here.