The only good news about the Bush major economies meeting (MEM) and related G-8 economic summit discussion on climate change is that it has mercifully now come to an end – not with a bang, but a whimper.

The clear split between the European Union and the United States, Canada, and Japan on global warming policy was on full display these past three days here in Hokkaido, Japan. This fissure prevented the G-8 members from reaching any meaningful understanding with the major developing countries that came to Hokkaido for the Major Economies meeting. President Bush gets the lion’s share of the blame for this failure of leadership, but Prime Minister Fukuda and Prime Minister Harper share responsibility as well.

President Bush’s position that U.S. emissions should be allowed to continue to grow until 2025 is particularly galling. This might be a reasonable goal for a mid-sized developing country, but not for the world’s richest and most powerful nation. It’s up to the next president to commit the U.S. to making the substantial reductions in global warming pollution needed to address the problem.

President Bush has also said “there will never be an effective (climate) agreement unless China and India are at the table.” In fact, major developing countries have repeatedly indicated their willingness to do their share, but only if the U.S. joins other industrialized countries in cutting greenhouse gas emissions. And these major developing countries are already taking action. For example, China’s current fuel economy standards for new cars are higher than those the Congress mandated by 2020 in last year’s energy bill, and China has established goals to increase the share of its energy coming from renewable sources. By contrast, President Bush threatened to veto the energy bill if it included a national renewable electricity standard.

There is no agreement among the industrialized countries on key issues, including the level of ambition and base year for both mid-term and long-term emissions reductions and how to meet the need for greatly ramped-up assistance to developing countries both for clean technology and adaptation measures. It is abundantly clear that until there is a new U.S. president who is prepared to join the EU and major developing countries in framing a truly responsible approach to the climate issue, little progress can be made.

One bright spot at this meeting is that the so-called G-5 countries – Brazil, China, India, Mexico, and South Africa – have developed a unified position on key issues, and issued their own detailed declaration in response to the G-8 leaders’ statement. They made it clear that if “developed countries take the lead in achieving ambitious and absolute greenhouse gas emissions reductions,” they would be “committed to undertaking nationally appropriate mitigation…actions” aimed at “achieving a deviation from business-as-usual” emissions levels.

Now that the G-8 and Bush MEM sideshow is over, the focus shifts back to the United Nations negotiations on a new post-2012 climate treaty regime. That is where the issues that were ducked here in Hokkaido – science-based emissions reduction targets for industrialized countries, developing country mitigation measures, technology cooperation and financing, and adaptation – must be addressed, not with platitudes and rhetoric, but with concrete proposals and meaningful action to truly respond to the climate crisis.

Permalink | Comment on this story (4 posted)

By Union of Concerned Scientists Director of Strategy and Policy Alden Meyer

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 9th, 2008 at 12:41 pm and is filed under Politics .