Producers of half the world's "greenhouse" gases are angling for more private investment to create cleaner energy technologies and help slow global warming.
WASHINGTON — Producers of half the world's "greenhouse" gases are angling for more private investment to create cleaner energy technologies and help slow global warming.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman and presidential adviser James Connaughton will meet next week in Sydney, Australia, with representatives from five Asian and Pacific nations. Along with the U.S., these countries account for nearly half the world's population, energy use and economic output.
The White House said its talks with Australia, China, India, Japan and South Korea will enhance rather than replace the Kyoto climate treaty that President Bush rejected because of its mandatory cuts in carbon dioxide, methane and other gases.
"It's a complement to it," Connaughton, chairman of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, said Wednesday. "For the countries in Kyoto, it will be a very useful tool for them to meet their obligations."
Among major developed nations, only the United States and Australia reject the 1997 treaty negotiated in Kyoto, Japan, that mandates specific cutbacks in emissions of carbon dioxide and five other gases by 2012 in 35 industrialized countries.
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China and India signed the treaty as developing nations, exempting them from the first round of emissions cuts. Japan must cut emissions by 6 percent below 1990 levels, and South Korea by 5 percent.
Fossil fuel-burning in the U.S. produces one-quarter of the world's gases that scientists blame for trapping heat in the atmosphere like a greenhouse. The Bush administration advocates slowing the growth rate of those gases, not reversing the trend.
Connaughton said the "Asia-Pacific partnership" announced last July would drum up more private investment for common goals. They include U.S. and Chinese plans to improve energy efficiency in coal-burning power plants and cut acid rain-causing sulfur dioxide emissions.
"This is harder than negotiating a diplomatic document, because this is creating real work plans," he said. "The only way to reduce the environmental impact of growth in key developing countries like China and India is through growing the economies that will pay for the efficiency and pollution controls that make the cuts possible. We welcome their growth."
Far more will be required if China's economy keeps expanding at its current rate, said Lester Brown, president of the Earth Policy Institute, an environmental research group.
He argues in a new book that China could reach current U.S. income and consumption levels by 2031 -- and the world lacks the basic resources to sustain that.
"China is demonstrating that the Western economic model, the fossil fuel-based, automobile-centered, throwaway economy is not going to work," he said Wednesday. "And if it won't work for China, it won't work for India. Nor will it work for the other 3 billion people in developing countries also dreaming the American dream."
European wind farms, Japanese solar rooftops, U.S. hybrid cars, South Korea's reforested hills and bicycle-laden streets in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, are all examples of the "eco-economy" Brown has in mind.
Building it, he said, would require $161 billion a year in global spending on renewable energy, diversified transportation and far greater reuse and recycling of materials.
Rice is also traveling to Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation, for talks on the country's democratic development and strengthening military ties with the United States. Bird flu is also on her agenda in Jakarta. Military ties have improved since the 1990s, when U.S. cut off most cooperation in response to government crackdowns in the troubled territory of East Timor.
Source: Associated Press
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