US seeks leadership role on climate change, but where is it leading?

For much of its time in office, the Bush administration stiff-armed the international community on climate change. It rejected the Kyoto Treaty, resisted binding greenhouse gas emission targets, questioned the growing body of science that pointed to the dangers posed by climate change, and cooked the books by removing or downplaying passages in reports that linked global warming with human activities. (The oil industry, through its financial support of front groups and politically conservative think tanks, helped write the administration's playbook).

More recently, the administration has sought a leadership role, organizing a handful of Asia/Pacific nations into a "partnership" to promote clean-energy technologies development and deployment; and sponsoring a multilateral conference in Washington September 27 and 28, to consider "how to deal with global climate change after the Kyoto Protocol expires in 2012."

The question is, where does the US intend to lead?

The members of the Asia Pacific Partnership are the US, Australia, China, India, Japan and South Korea. Japan is the only industrial nation in the partnership that has agreed to accept Kyoto's emissions-reduction targets. Developing countries, such as China, India and South Korea don't have Kyoto reduction targets, although their greenhouse gas emissions are growing and China's are expected to exceed those of the US very soon. The goal of the partnership is to promote voluntary measures to remove barriers to the introduction of innovative technologies..

In addition to the US, participants in the upcoming meeting are Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Russia, South Africa, South Korea, the United Kingdom, and representatives of the European Union. The meeting will also emphasize technology and "seek agreement on the process by which the major economies would, by the end of 2008, agree upon a post-2012 framework," President George W. Bush said.

The White House-sponsored meeting is being held two days after a special United National General Assembly meeting on climate change; and two months before a UN climate meeting in Bali, which will continue efforts to develop a successor agreement to Kyoto, including binding emissions-reduction targets and timetables. Meanwhile, the administration continues to emphasize voluntary approaches, which most observers consider woefully inadequate, given the magnitude of the problem.

Critics suggest that the administration's goal is to undermine support for the UN process and to deflect international pressure to accept mandatory greenhouse gas limits. The White House insists it wants to aid, not counter, the UN's efforts. But nothing in the Administration's record suggests it would support a process that leads to even deeper emissions cuts than required by the KyotoTreaty.