Look beyond Bush for US leadership on climate change: Kerry
NUSA DUA, Indonesia (AFP) — The United States is waiting in the wings to play a leading role in the fight against climate change, defeated 2004 presidential candidate Senator John Kerry said here Monday.
With President George W. Bush entering his last year in office, the Democrat who lost the race for the White House three years ago said a new American leader could make a difference in tackling global warming.
But Kerry, leading a delegation from the Democratic-led Senate to the UN talks on climate change on Bali, warned that any agreement succeeding the Kyoto Protocol would fail unless poorer nations were also committed to new targets.
"We wanted to bring to Bali the message that the United States is going to be at the table, the United States is going to lead, the United States is going to embrace significantly changed policies in order to deal with climate change," he said.
"Look, we're spending a trillion dollars on the war in Iraq. We ought to be able to find several hundred billion dollars to save the planet."
President Bush walked away from the Kyoto Protocol in March 2001 in one of his first acts after beating Al Gore, who later Monday was to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his advocacy on climate change.
Saying he would never submit the treaty to US Senate ratification, Bush argued that the deal was unfair as it only mandated that wealthy countries, not emerging nations, slash gas emissions blamed for global warming.
Harlan Watson, the head of the US delegation here, denied that Bush was a lame duck.
"This administration is here," Watson told reporters. "We don't want to wait for two years. Let's get something going here.
"We're here to talk about the differences and try to resolve them. That's what the negotiation process is all about."
Bush's viewpoint also reflected a US Senate vote on July 25, 1997, less than five months before the Kyoto Protocol was completed as a framework accord.
In that 95-0 vote, the Senate said the United States should not be party to a treaty that did not include binding targets or a timetable for developing countries or which "would result in serious harm to the economy of the United States."
Kerry -- who as senator for Massachusetts took part in the 1997 vote -- said US local governments were increasingly spearheading efforts against global warming, pointing to commitments made by a growing number of states including California.
But, he cautioned, the US Senate was still unlikely to accept a successor to Kyoto that did not enlist emerging economies.
"A lot of us are prepared to lead, recognising we're the world's biggest polluter, recognising we haven't been part of this for the past few years, recognising that we have to earn our bona fides," Kerry said.
"But we're not prepared to do it in a way that is ad infinitum without the knowledge that the other folks are cutting in some way that is meaningful."
Kerry agreed developed countries should have greater commitments in curbing emissions but also called on them to help emerging economies "avoid making the mistakes that we made since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution."
The talks in Bali are aimed at setting up a framework for cutting emissions beyond 2012, when the Kyoto Protocol's current commitments expire.
Developing countries such as China and India are already major emitters and, given the fast expansion of their economies and dependence on coal and oil, their emissions are poised to increase.
So far, they have refused to sign up to binding commitments for curbing greenhouse gases. They argue that rich countries bear historic responsibility for today's warming and their own emissions are just a fraction, per capita, of that emitted by developed economies.
