Posted on 08/03/2007 1:47:33 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
WASHINGTON – President Bush invited representatives of major industrialized and developing countries to a climate change summit in September at the same time that the United Nations is holding a similar conclave.
“In recent years, science has deepened our understanding of climate change and opened new possibilities for confronting it,” Bush said in his invitation letter Friday, asking other nations to take part in discussing a long-term strategy for reducing greenhouse emissions.
Under international pressure to take tough action against global warming, Bush last May had called for a meeting of nations to talk about how to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions and promote energy efficiency without hampering economic growth.
He made the initial announcement at the Group of Eight summit in Germany, and now is sending out invitations for a meeting Sept. 27-28 that will be hosted by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
Bush wants to bring India, China and other fast-growing countries to the negotiating table so they are part of the solution, not the problem.
The summit will address “life after” the Kyoto Protocol expires in 2012. The Kyoto agreement, adopted in 1997, aims to limit the amount of carbon dioxide that can be emitted from power plants and factories in industrialized countries.
The United States, the largest emitter of greenhouse gases, is not a party to the Kyoto agreement, and large developing countries such as China, the second-largest emitter, India and Brazil are exempt from its obligations. They are afraid they will be called on to reduce emissions after 2012, which would hurt their economic growth and poverty-eradication efforts.
Bush, who plans to address the conference, sent invitations to the European Union, the European Commission, France, Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom, Japan, China, Canada, India, Brazil, South Korea, Mexico, Russia, Australia, Indonesia, South Africa and the United Nations.
In his invitation, Bush said representatives would talk about ways the major world economies would – by the end of 2008 – agree upon a post-2012 framework that could include a long-term global goal for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. He said they also would talk about working with the private sector to promote clean energy technologies.
The question of what to do to tackle climate change has become increasingly complex because of competing environmental, economic and energy concerns from countries with different priorities.
At the United Nations, nearly 100 countries speaking at the first U.N. General Assembly meeting on climate change signaled strong support for negotiations on a new global deal to tackle global warming. Clinching a deal will likely take several years of intense and difficult negotiations, which are expected to start at a December meeting on the Indonesian island of Bali. It will focus on a replacement for the Kyoto protocol, which requires 35 industrial nations to cut their global-warming emissions 5 percent below 1990 levels by 2012, when the accord expires.
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who has made climate change a top priority since taking the reins of the U.N. on Jan. 1, has urged all countries to reach a comprehensive agreement by 2009, which would leave time for governments to ratify the accord so it could take effect in 2013.
Ban said he was convening a high-level meeting on climate change on Sept. 24, a day before the General Assembly's annual ministerial meeting begins. As it turns out, this is the same week Bush singled out for the conference he is promoting.
Thanks! I’ll leave this one up, it’s a non-excerpt.
Bush has gone around the bend!
No longer true. And if we are talking net instead of gross, it has not been true for a good while.
He did that a few years ago when he signed those two huge entitlement, socialist spending bills.
The man has completely lost his marbles.
To be fair to the President, he’s trying to engage the nations of the world in a reality based discussion on climate change and good, healthy economic policies.
Oh no? Source?
I should add a modicum of explanation. Basically, this study shows that the USA is already at or below the carbon emissions from 1990 if you take into account reductions in carbon from various causes.
Cool. The President is taking it out of the hands of the Euro-weenies.
Think China and India are going to support enforced emissions cutbacks? Think again.
That's the claim you made in #5 that I found notable, because it contradicts everything else I've read. Have a source?
I am hopeful that Pres. Bush’s conference is being planned, structured, and timed as a means of pre-emptively moderating some of the Goregasmic anthropogenic climate change hysteria that is likely to be featured at the UN conference, as well as insuring that other major industrial nations (e.g., China, India, et al) will not be overlooked in any dialogues and deliberations that may ensue.
That's not what it says. It claims that per capita CO2 emissions are essentially flat since 1990, but the US population has increased by nearly 25% in the intervening 17 years, meaning net CO2 emissions have substantially increased.
I was quoting some things I had seen on here before in #5. I thought this article was a supporting one (working on memory.) If I find a better source, I’ll send it to you. But it will be later... I’m heading out the door shortly.
Here’s the deal: The US will agree to the exact same percentage reduction as India and China. We’ll reduce the tons of US GHG emissions to 10% below 1990 levels if China and India do the same.
ANWIH India and China would agree to that, so why should we ?
Case closed, summit a success.
To be fair to the President, he should be put away.
“To be fair to the President, he should be put away.”
I heartily agree!
“but the US population has increased by nearly 25% in the intervening 17 years, meaning net CO2 emissions have substantially increased.”
Another excellent reason to deport ALL illegals... especially those posing as legal residents.
LLS
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