Posted on 09/08/2007 3:27:03 AM PDT by Clive
SYDNEY, Australia (CP) - Leaders of some of the world's fastest-growing economies are on track toward a "sensible" international agreement to curb climate change, Australian Prime Minister John Howard announced Saturday.
But the hard-won consensus at the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation forum includes no targets for emissions reductions and oceans of wiggle room even within the non-binding APEC communique.
Canada and Japan are explicitly singled out for credit in the body of the text for their efforts in getting the agreement, given the divisions within the disparate APEC forum.
"We and a couple of others stood firm," said a senior Canadian official at a briefing late Saturday.
But getting the growing Asian economies to agree to targets of 50 per cent reductions in emissions by 2050, said the official, "was a bridge too far."
Howard, who had raised expectations that the 15th APEC leaders' summit would mark a major environmental watershed, maintained the rhetoric Saturday in the face of withering condemnations from environmentalists.
The APEC consensus, said Howard, is "a very important milestone in the march towards a sensible international agreement on climate change."
Howard emerged from three hours of face-to-face leaders' negotiations to announce the agreement.
"This declaration does transcend a number of international divisions," he said, noting it's the first such gathering on climate change to include both China and the United States in endorsing "a long-term aspirational global emissions reduction goal."
As recently as April of this year, Howard's own foreign minister, Alexander Downer, had called aspiration targets "code for a political stunt. An aspirational target is not a real target at all."
But simply getting the world's biggest emitters to start talking about a post-Kyoto plan on climate change is a big step forward, Prime Minister Stephen Harper maintained on the eve of this APEC summit.
"It'll be the first time the world's done this," Harper told reporters here on Friday evening. "In the Kyoto protocol, nations representing two-thirds of emissions essentially opted out. So, we have to do a better job next time."
His director of communications, Sandra Buckler, credited Harper personally with helping get the deal done Saturday.
"I would just say bluntly that when Canada speaks now, it speaks with credibility," said Buckler.
The 21 members of APEC account for about 60 per cent of global emissions, according to Harper, and include most of the world's fastest growing economies.
Howard said the agreement will help pave the way for further international talks on climate change later this month in Washington and a United Nations conference in Bali in December.
The formal declaration, called the Sydney Statement, reads: "The world needs to slow, stop and then reverse the growth of global greenhouse gas emissions."
But it places no timeline on that process.
And even the concept of a broad aspirational goal is couched in ambiguity.
"We agree to work to achieve a common understanding on a long-term aspirational global emissions reduction goal," says the text, "to pave the way for an effective post-2012 international arrangement."
APEC members also agreed to reduce "energy intensity" - the amount of energy needed to produce a unit of economic growth - 25 per cent by 2030.
That non-binding, one-per-cent annual reduction doesn't translate into real cuts in emissions, but could slow the rate of increase.
Howard, who is in deep political trouble at home and expected to call an election this fall, needed to have some target number included in the communique. The intensity goal is seen as a face-saving compromise.
Canadian officials insisted both the process of getting large developing nations inside the climate change tent and the target numbers themselves are significant.
"Both were important achievements," said one official.
The declaration also calls for increasing forest cover in the APEC region by at least 20 million hectares by 2020. Forests help absorb the greenhouse gases that cause global warming.
But condemnations were swift.
At a demonstration in downtown Sydney on Saturday, Australian Green Party senator Kerry Nettle said "Howard's aspirational targets are rubbish. He is trying to undermine the Kyoto protocol."
The ground-breaking 1997 international agreement is not mentioned anywhere in the APEC document.
A fortiori geopolitics.
We didn’t cause it and we will not fix it... Mother nature is in charge.
LLS
lol (shaking head)
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