US negotiator says America wary of Kyoto Protocol follow-up

[Barrett808]

The top US negotiator at world climate change talks ruled out on Friday any chance of Washington backing the next agreement on cutting carbon pollution if the deal resembled the Kyoto Protocol already rejected by President George W. Bush.

"It's going to be very difficult for the United States to get back to a Kyoto-type (agreement) because it has a rigid target and timetable agreement" for emissions cuts, Harlan Watson, senior climate negotiator at the State Department, told journalists here.

"(...) For the foreseeable future, anyway, the United States would not be particularly pleased with the Kyoto framework. We think that there are basic difficulties, there are also some operational difficulties."

Bush delivered the UN's draft anti-global warming treaty a crippling blow in March 2001 when he announced that the United States -- the biggest single culprit for the pollution -- would not ratify the deal.

He said it was too costly for the US economy, which is overwhelmingly dependent on carbon-rich fossil fuels, and unfair because it did not tie India and China and other fast-growing populous countries to specific emissions cuts.

(more)

http://www.spacedaily.com/2003/031114135500.5dgjl0p4.html

[pmbryant]

1. Truly pathetic

So they don't want "rigid targets" or "timetables" then. What do they want? Perhaps some "voluntary" guidelines, as usual?

Not just pathetic, but shameful.

--Peter

[Jack Rabbit]

2. Who cares what he thinks?

No one outside the GOP does.

The world is moving forward without the Frat Boy. The next legal occupant of the White House will have some catching up to do, but the progress will have been made.

[tlb]

4. Not just the GOP.

The Kyoto process was rejected by the senate in 1997 by a vote of 95 to 0. Not a single senator on either side voted for the proposition the US should proceed. Following this the Clinton administration shelved the treaty and no more was heard until Bush restated the intent of the 1997 vote.

For all the posturing on the subejct, neither party has shown it intends to follow thorugh on this.

[MetaTrope]

3. Go suck on an exhaust pipe, Harlan

:puffpiece: