U.S. Rebuffs Europeans Urging Change of Mind on Kyoto Treaty
Whitman Suggests 'Innovative Approach' to Global Warming

By Eric Pianin
Wednesday, April 4, 2001

The Bush administration yesterday turned aside pleas from European Union officials to reconsider its decision to abandon a global warming agreement and said it would move ahead to develop alternative proposals far less costly to the U.S. economy.

Kjell Larsson, Sweden's environment minister, who took part in meetings with administration officials, said that the EU representatives had come to Washington looking for "a small opening" or sign that talks on the global warming treaty could be revived but that "we didn't get that."

The EU delegation met for more than an hour with Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Christine Todd Whitman and White House and State Department officials, who repeated President Bush's complaints that the global warming treaty negotiated in Kyoto, Japan, in 1997 would adversely affect the U.S. economy while exempting developing countries, including India and China, from tough emissions targets.

"If one of the biggest countries withdraws or says we do not accept to stay in the [negotiation] process, that is a big backlash for the whole process and that is very disappointing," said Margot Wallstroem, the EU's environment commissioner.

Whitman said later that she emphasized to the European officials that "I continue to be as optimistic as the president that, working constructively with our friends and allies through international processes, we can develop technologies, market-based incentives and other innovative approaches to global climate change."

Bush has ordered a Cabinet-level review of U.S. climate change policy that will look into what to do about concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere that scientists say are driving up the Earth's temperature.

Whitman played a central role early in the administration's deliberations over global warming and predicted -- wrongly, as it turned out -- that the president would keep a campaign pledge to seek reductions in carbon dioxide emissions from power plants. Many scientists believe carbon dioxide emissions are contributing to the warming of the planet.

Whitman also hinted broadly to her EU counterparts that the administration might continue to participate in negotiations over the Kyoto protocol, despite Bush's criticism of the agreement during last year's campaign.

Last week, however, the White House announced that the global warming agreement was dead and that Bush would develop a new approach. The decision enraged the Europeans, who elevated global warming to the top of their political agenda, and angered environmentalists, who said that the White House had undercut Whitman.

Yesterday, Friends of the Earth, a prominent environmental group, called on Whitman to resign as EPA administrator, saying that her credibility had been compromised "beyond repair" in the United States and abroad.

A spokesman for Whitman declined to comment.

The United States and its allies have spent nearly a decade trying to negotiate an agreement on combating global warming. Efforts at negotiating the final rules for implementing the Kyoto accord collapsed in November, and the Europeans and Japanese are trying to pump life back into the talks, scheduled to resume in Bonn in July.

European leaders have said they will chart their own course if they cannot gain the United States' cooperation.

However, some U.S. industry and labor groups and independent experts say it may be impossible for the United States and many European countries to implement the Kyoto protocol without causing serious harm to their economies. A June 2000 study by the Pew Center on Global Climate Change concluded that while Britain and Germany likely could meet the Kyoto targets, the Netherlands, Austria and Spain would fall far short.

"The grandstanding the European Union is doing is preposterous," said Glenn F. Kelly of the Global Climate Coalition, an industry group that contends the agreement cannot be realistically implemented. "The fact is they're quietly relieved" that the Bush administration has pulled out.

However, Jennifer L. Morgan of the World Wildlife Fund said: "The Europeans are doing a pretty good-faith effort of assessing where they are and what they have to do to meet their targets. . . . If you compare that with the U.S., which hasn't had any debate on how to implement Kyoto targets, they are miles apart."