from Sunday Herald, 10 June 2007
Everyone agrees that progress was made on combating climate change at the G8 summit of world leaders in Heiligendamm, Germany, last week. But opinions differ sharply on how much.
For the outgoing Prime Minister, Tony Blair, it was a "huge step forward". But for American environmentalists it was a "pretty tiny landmark". The truth, of course, lies somewhere in between.
First the bad news. President Bush did not make any commitments to cut the pollution that causes global warming within any specified time period. All he agreed to do was to begin negotiations on cuts for his successor to implement after 2008.
The good news is that he did agree to "strong and early action to tackle climate change". He accepted, in the words of the Heiligendamm declaration (pdf), that global warming was "dangerous" and required "substantial" reductions in global emissions of greenhouse gases.
Said the declaration: "We will consider seriously the decisions made by the European Union, Canada and Japan which include at least a halving of global emissions by 2050. We commit to achieving these goals and invite the major emerging economies to join us in this endeavour."
Bush promised to join Union Nations negotiations on the next phase of tackling climate change, beginning in Bali, Indonesia in December this year. Along with other major polluters, he committed to agreeing "a detailed contribution for a new global framework by the end of 2008".
So in essence what the world has is an agreement to make an agreement. That may not seem like much, but given the US administration's historic opposition to multilateral action, it is something.
Expectations of the GB making significant progress were low, so the outcome has come as a pleasant surprise to some. Dr Richard Dixon, director of WWF Scotland, had been expecting to award the summit just one out of ten, but in the end gave it six.
"The Germans pushed a very ambitious set of proposals and came out of it with some serious progress," he told the Sunday Herald. Although the US had resisted setting a target for cutting greenhouse gas emissions, it had agreed to work within the UN process and set a deadline for an agreement.
"This should put and end to the Bush and Blair sideshows aimed at undermining the UN Kyoto process," Dixon added. "The big test will be to see how much progress can be made at the UN meeting in Bali in December."
But the US lobby group, the National Environmental Trust, took a harsher line. "President Bush rejected every solid proposal on the table to cut global warming pollution, and the US is fundamentally isolated from the rest of the world on the issue once again," said the trust's president, Philip Clapp.
Clapp argued that Blair and the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, had failed to win any major concessions from Bush. "President Bush didn't give them an inch," he said.
"The best they could get from him was a statement that their 50%-by-2050 emissions reduction proposal would be 'seriously considered.' That's a pretty tiny landmark."
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