PARIS (AFP) — President George W. Bush's plans for tackling global warming faced a litmus test in Paris on Thursday among ministers representing the world's biggest carbon polluters.
Ministers were expected to pore over the speech made by Bush in Washington on Wednesday to judge how the planet's No. 1 emitter intended to address its own contribution to the peril of climate change.
But a fiery early response from Africa's leading economy suggested the United States could be in for a rough ride.
South Africa branded Bush's speech as a retreat from previous US positions that would leave the United States "alone against the overwhelming majority of the world."
His speech came on the eve of a two-day meeting in Paris gathering 16 economies which together account for 80 percent of global greenhouse-gas emissions.
The talks are the third so-called Major Economies Meeting (MEM), a process launched by Bush that had won grudging applause for helping to ease the US' pariah status on climate change.
Bush has also won praise for joining other countries in a UN agreement in Bali, Indonesia, last December to launch a two-year schedule of talks towards an ambitious new climate pact beyond 2012.
However, these talks still have to bridge a massive rift between the United States on one side and Europe and developing countries on the other as to who should make emissions-cutting pledges.
Bush walked away from the UN's Kyoto Protocol in 2001, arguing that Kyoto was too costly for his oil-dependent economy and unfair as only rich nations -- and not big emerging countries such as China and India -- had to make legally-binding curbs on their greenhouse-gas emissions.
The emerging giants, though, are firmly against signing up to mandatory targets in the post-2012 Kyoto commitments.
They argue that they are not to blame for today's warming and stringent pledges could threaten their rise out of poverty.
Those same issues emerged anew on Wednesday in Bush's speech.
Bush called for the growth in US greenhouse gas emissions to be stopped by 2025, but his speech was short on specifics on how to achieve these targets and mentioned no legal curbs for forcing polluters to meet this goal.
He also spelled out his objections to any post-2012 deal that failed to embrace fast-growing populous nations. The United States supports a format that encompasses every major economy "and gives none a free ride," the president said.
In a statement issued in Paris, South African Environment and Tourism Minister Marthinus van Schalkwyk said Bush apparently "wants to turn back the clock to where we were before the breakthrough achieved in Bali."
"There is no way whatsoever that we can agree to what the US is proposing, which means that the fundamental distinction between developed and developing countries should be erased and that we should turn a blind eye to historical responsibility for the problem.
"In effect, the US wants developing countries that already face huge poverty and development challenges to pay for what the US and other highly industrialized countries have caused over the past 150 years," he said.
"(...) On this issue, the current US administration is isolated. It is them against the overwhelming majority of the world, developed and developing countries alike."
Bush launched the MEM last September with the idea of identifying a global emissions goal and seeing how emissions could be tackled by introducing smart technology and encouraging greater efforts by energy-intensive industries.
The forum gathers Australia, Brazil, Britain, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Mexico, Russia, South Africa and the United States. The UN and EU are also represented.
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