NAIROBI: This year's UN conference on climate change looks headed for a wrap-up without any real progress on talks to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. President Bush, with his mandate expiring in January 2009, has made it clear that he will not retract US rejection of the Kyoto Protocol on global warming.
Bush had rejected US participation in the UN treaty saying it would hamper economic growth. America is as concerned about the “serious, long term challenge” posed by global warming and is taking action voluntarily to curb or reduce emission of greenhouse gases, US delegate Harlan Watson said at the opening of the conference yesterday.
Coal-fired power plants, industries that burn fossil fuel and automobiles release tons of carbon dioxide, methane and other pollutants into the air. These emissions upset the delicate balance of gases that makes Earth's atmosphere conducive to life. Gradual increase of a particular gas, carbon dioxide for instance, results in an increase in average global temperatures, a possible explanation for the increasingly longer summers, every year, and reducing ice mass in Polar Regions.
The Kyoto Protocol requires a commitment from member states to lower their industrial emissions to 5 percent below levels recorded in 1990. It offered a deadline of 2012 by which the reduction was to be achieved.
Ecology experts and environmentalists blame developed countries where industrial activity is promoted without a care for the environment. The US and Australia are among nations whose economies depend largely on fossil fuels. Some groups accuse the US of being the largest polluter in the world. Delegates of some states even said their development goals would be hampered by global warming.
Watson told reporters that the US is working within the UN framework and encouraging research and development of technological innovation that could help reduce the emissions at its factories and power plants. He said President Bush's climate change policy is “science-based”.
The conference will close on November 17.
