Editorial: Climate change treaty in a fog

Tuesday, Dec. 13, 2005 | 8:50 a.m.

The United Nations' two-week talks on global warming ended last week with the United States, the world's leader in greenhouse gas emissions, refusing to agree to mandatory steps that could slow global warming.

The Bush administration's chief negotiator, Harlan L. Watson, walked out of the discussions on Friday as other delegates criticized the United States for refusing to advance the goals of the United Nations' 1992 climate change treaty and its 1997 addendum, the Kyoto Protocol.

The 10-day meeting, conducted in Montreal, attracted more than 8,000 scientists, government officials and environmental activists who had hoped to formulate rules for a new global treaty that would cut emissions of greenhouse (heat-trapping) gases. No firm agreement was reached.

The new treaty was to start when the Kyoto Protocol expires in 2012. The Kyoto agreement, ratified by 140 of the countries that attended the Montreal meeting, calls for the top 35 industrialized countries to lower their emissions of carbon dioxide and five other greenhouse gases that scientists say have raised global temperatures and affected weather.

The United States, which emits 25 percent of such gases worldwide, ratified the 1992 treaty, which carried no restrictions, but then refused to sign the Kyoto Protocol. U.S. officials say the treaty's emissions caps will hurt the nation's economy and have called the treaty unfair because it didn't restrict the emerging economies of China and India.

The New York Times reported that Watson walked out of Friday's discussions after objecting to the proposed title of a statement that called for long-term international cooperation to carry out the goals set in the 1992 treaty. The Bush administration claims cleaner technologies are the path to reducing emissions and boasts that the United States spends $5 billion annually developing such technologies to lower emissions growth by 18 percent by 2012.

But lowering the growth of emissions is not the same as curtailing them overall. As the world's leader in producing greenhouse gases, the United States also should lead the world in reducing emissions. Instead, the United States' example is leading emerging economies the other way. China -- an emerging greenhouse-gas emitter to which the Bush administration points when it cries foul -- sided with the United States last week and also opposed proposals to cap emissions. It is a path that imperils the environmental health of our children's future.