Kyoto treaty pressures U.S.

By The Associated Press

KYOTO, Japan -- Amid fanfare marking the enactment of the Kyoto global warming pact, leading proponents laid out their next goals Wednesday: persuading the United States to join the world crackdown on emissions of carbon dioxide and other gases and planning further steps when the current agreement runs out in 2012.

The Kyoto Protocol, adopted in Japan's ancient capital in 1997, imposes legally binding requirements on 35 industrialized states to cut emissions of "greenhouse gases" blamed for raising world temperatures to an average of 5 percent below 1990 levels. The treaty was ratified in 140 nations.

But the largest emitter of such gases, the United States, has refused to go along with the restrictions, saying they are flawed and could hurt its economy. Washington's absence loomed large over celebrations Wednesday in Kyoto, where environment ministers from member countries said progress would be limited without American participation.

"Climate change is a global problem and it can only be dealt with with a global approach," said Joke Waller-Hunter, the Dutch chief of the secretariat to the 1992 U.N. climate change treaty, to which the protocol is an adjunct.

The United States signed the protocol in 1997 under President Clinton, but the Senate refused to ratify it. President Bush renounced the agreement in 2001, and his government has expressed doubts about the link between gases believed to trap heat in the atmosphere and climate change.

No clear strategy has emerged on how to enlist U.S. participation. Several environmental officials voiced hopes that the increasing profitability of technologies and businesses targeted at reducing gas emissions would demonstrate that battling climate change could lead to new industries and jobs.

Thomas Becker, of Denmark's Environment Ministry, likened Washington's reluctance to join Kyoto to American automakers' failure to produce fuel-efficient cars in the 1970s. But he said the best advertisement for the pact would be its success.

"There is a market for climate-friendly technologies -- it's a market rather than a burden," he said.

The United States argued that it was being environmentally responsible despite its opposition to Kyoto, with White House spokesman Scott McClellan saying Tuesday "we are still learning" about the science of climate change.