U.S. scuttles emissions targets

NUSA DUA, Indonesia — As the U.N. climate conference draws near its conclusion, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Wednesday conceded that the United States' goal of deleting specific emission-reduction guidelines from a draft agreement has succeeded.

The Bali meeting was convened to draw up a road map for negotiations on a new treaty to replace the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which is scheduled to expire in 2012. An initial draft of the guidelines called for industrialized countries to reduce their carbon-dioxide emissions 25 percent to 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2020, but the Bush administration has resisted targets.

Chief U.S. negotiator Harlan Watson reiterated that position Wednesday. "The reality in this business is that once numbers appear in the text, it prejudges the outcome and will tend to drive the negotiations in one direction," he said.

Reflecting the need for any document to be accepted unanimously, the numbers were removed from the draft Wednesday.

The drafters also removed a clause calling for global emissions to peak in 10 to 15 years and be reduced to at least half of 2000 levels by 2050, which China and India had fought.

Both countries' emissions have more than doubled since 1990, and both want only voluntary standards for developing countries.

John Baird, Canada's environment minister, argued that if only rich countries accept emissions targets, the pollution simply will be shifted to developing countries.

"We can close a steel mill today in Canada. But if we just import the steel from China, what will we have accomplished? Absolutely nothing," he said.

China's climate-change ambassador Yu Qingtai said the country eventually might be willing to adopt caps, but only if it received major technology aid from Western nations for developing cleaner energy processes. Such technology assistance has not been forthcoming, he added.

The Kyoto treaty calls for 36 industrialized nations to reduce their emissions 5 percent below 1990 levels by 2012 — in part because its emissions have grown by 26 percent since 1990.