Tuesday, April 3, 2007

European Union accused the United States and Australia on Monday of hampering international efforts to tackle climate change

EU Slams United States, Australia on Climate Change | BELGIUM: April 3, 2007

BRUSSELS - The European Union accused the United States and Australia on Monday of hampering international efforts to tackle climate change.

"We expect ... the United States to cooperate closer and not to continue having a negative attitude in international negotiations," Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas told delegates at a United Nations-sponsored meeting to review a report on the regional effects of rising global temperatures.

"It is absolutely necessary that they move because otherwise other countries, especially the developing countries, do not have any reason to move," he said.

Efforts to launch negotiations to extend the UN Kyoto Protocol on climate change beyond 2012 have floundered as nations resist committing to targets for cutting greenhouse gases.

The 27-nation EU agreed last month to cut its greenhouse gas emissions by at least 20 percent by 2020 compared to 1990 levels, challenging industrialised and developing countries to go further with a 30 percent cut which the EU would then match.

But so far other nations have not responded to that call, a fact which Dimas blamed largely on US reluctance to cap its own emissions.

President George W. Bush pulled Washington out of Kyoto in 2001, saying it would harm the US economy and unfairly excluded developing nations from emissions targets. ...

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