Gas-guzzling US under fire at global warming talks; THE HAGUE (AFP) - -
The European Union threw down the gauntlet to the United States at the UN climate change talks here, accusing Washington of being the biggest single culprit for global warming and challenging it to "join" the fight against the peril.
French President Jacques Chirac, whose country is current chair of the EU, warned action was urgently needed "before we reach the point of no return" and climate change destroyed the legacy of future generations.
Chirac, speaking at the start of five-day negotiations among 186 countries to complete the Kyoto Protocol on global warming, pointed the finger at the United States for its lavish consumption of fossil fuels.
"The United States alone produces a quarter of the world emissions. Each American emits three times more greenhouse gases than a Frenchman. It is in the Americans, in the first place, that we place our hopes of effectively limiting greenhouse gas emissions on a global scale."
"I call upon the United States of America, therefore, to cast aside their doubts and hesitations. The time has come for them to join with the other leading industrialised nations to work together in making a successful transition to an energy-efficient, yet no less thriving, economy."
Chirac's speech set the stage for a potential clash between the EU and the United States as the three-year negotiation process reaches its climax.
Kyoto, agreed in 1997, is a so-called framework agreement under which 38 advanced countries would cut their greenhouse emissions by just over five percent by 2012.
Ambitious and innovative, but also complex and untested, it cannot take effect until its signatories have approved its contents and a number of major polluting countries have ratified it.
But bitter rows between the EU and the US -- with the Third World aghast on the sidelines -- have meant that only the barest progress has been made.
Brussels and Washington are at loggerheads over US demands for so-called "flexibility mechanisms" that would lower the cost, for the United States, of meeting Kyoto's targets of trimming outputs of fossil-fuel gases.
"Anything connected with mechanisms, anything connected with compliance and anything connected with finance remains contested," German Environment Minister Juergen Trittin admitted Monday.
voila.co.uk ... original report
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