G6 climate change deal ‘a step forward’
Environment minister Elliot Morley has welcomed news that the US and five Asia-Pacific countries have signed up to an agreement to tackle climate change.
But he insisted the deal, expected to be announced in Laos later today, is not an alternative to the Kyoto treaty, which requires 35 industrialised nations to cut greenhouse gas emissions.
Australia and the US – the world’s biggest polluter – refuse to sign up to the 1997 protocol, arguing the exclusion of developing nations would put them at a competitive disadvantage.
As an alternative, however, the two countries have now joined with China, India, Japan and South Korea in a pact that allows signatories to set their own goals for reducing CO2 emissions. There is no enforcement mechanism.
“I very much welcome the fact that we are seeing cooperation between some countries, which are not signatories to Kyoto,” Mr Morley told Today.
He stressed he did not see the agreement as an alternative to Kyoto, which has been ratified by 140 countries, but said it was a “welcome step forward in relation to international co-operation”.
“The fact that people are working together, which is very much in line with the agreement from Gleneagles in relation to the action plan on sharing technologies and looking at issues like carbon capture, I think it’s a welcome step forward,” he added.
The agreement focuses more on developing new technologies rather than cutting greenhouse gas emissions, something US president George Bush has long championed as the only economically viable way to tackle climate change.
But Catherine Pearce from Friends of the Earth predicted the new pact, agreed by six countries that generate almost half of the world’s emissions, would mean “business as usual” for the US.
“A deal on technology, supported by voluntary measures to reduce emissions, will not address climate change,” she said, adding it merely served to undermine the Kyoto agreement.
This view was echoed by the Liberal Democrats, who said that new technologies alone would not solve the problem of climate change.
Environment spokesman Norman Baker said: “While this agreement may well be seen as helpful, there is still a suspicion that the US are trying to undermine Kyoto and replace it with a weaker alternative.”
