Washington - European Union officials said Tuesday there had been a noticeable shift in climate policy since President Barack Obama took office, but said they expected more drastic action before the United States could gain international credibility on the issue. Amid a flurry of meetings between US and global climate envoys this week in Washington, the EU's key environment ministers said it was up to the United States to improve its bargaining position by the time climate officials consider a new global deal this December in Copenhagen.
"We have been waiting for eight years" for US leadership, said Martin Bursik, environment minister of the Czech Republic, which holds the EU's rotating presidency.
He was speaking at a Washington climate forum, a day after meeting US climate envoy Todd Stern.
Bursik said the new administration had been moving with "double speed" to address global warming in a marked change from former president George W Bush, but much will depend on whether the US Congress follows suit.
Obama has said he wants to cut US greenhouse gas emissions blamed for global warming by about 15 per cent by 2020 and 80 per cent by 2050. But his signature policy - a cap-and-trade plan that would force US companies to pay for their emissions - faces significant opposition among US legislators who worry it will harm the economy.
Governments have set a deadline of December for agreeing on a new set of global targets to lower climate-damaging emissions. The EU, which already has a cap-and-trade system in place, has pressed for more ambitious targets than the United States.
EU officials warned that a global deal could fall apart if the United States - the world's largest polluter together with China - could not show it had made significant progress in curbing its own emissions.
Li Gao, director of China's department of climate change, on Monday maintained that developed countries had a "historical responsibility" for causing global warming and should also pay for the pollution generated by China's exports.
"The more the United States can deliver before Copenhagen, the more credibility the US will have," said Andreas Carlgren, Sweden's environment minister, at an event organized by the Pew Centre on Global Climate Change.
The United States is pushing for China and other emerging economies to accept more stringent targets to reduce their own emissions - a key stumbling block during the first climate treaty known as the Kyoto Protocol, which the US refused to join.
Stavros Dimas, the EU's commissioner for environment, said he expected at least the US House of Representatives to have approved a cap-and-trade bill by the Copenhagen summit, noting that developing countries like China and India were unlikely to set limits on their own emissions otherwise.
A vote in the House would send "a very powerful signal to the international negotiations and will help persuade our other international partners to come on board," Dimas said.
