US projects 4 percent emissions rise by 2012 to UN
By JOHN HEILPRIN (AP)
UNITED NATIONS — In its first major climate report to the United Nations
in four years, the United States reported Tuesday that its projected
climate-warming greenhouse gases will grow by 4 percent through 2020.
The first such report submitted under the Obama administration includes
a 1.5 percent rise in carbon dioxide emissions, the main gas from fossil
fuel burning blamed for global warming.
But it's the culpability of hydrofluorocarbons, or HFCs — promoted
worldwide to replace chemicals that harm the globe's ozone layer — that
gets a starring role.
Though HFCs account for only about 2 percent of the globe's
climate-warming gases, their share is expected to grow by up to a third
of all greenhouse gases by mid-century.
That's mainly because of their promotion under the Montreal Protocol,
the 1987 accord aimed at fixing the huge, seasonal hole in the
stratospheric ozone layer over Antarctica.
"A large portion of emissions growth is driven by HFCs, which are
projected to more than double between 2005 and 2020, as they are more
extensively used as a substitute for ozone-depleting substances," the
report submitted to the United Nations by the U.S. State Department
says.
In the report, President Barack Obama's administration also renews its
post-Copenhagen climate summit vow that industrialized nations'
"fast-start effort" will begin this year to help developing countries
deal with rising sea levels, drought and other effects of rising
temperatures.
The administration says it will be "contributing its share to developed
country financing approaching $30 billion for 2010-2012," which is about
three times what the U.S. contributed in 2009, the report says.
The $30 billion fund, scaling up to $100 billion a year by 2020, was a
key element of the deal brokered by Obama with the leaders of China and
other major developing countries at the 193-nation climate summit in the
Danish capital last December.
The fifth U.S. summary of climate change action, a nearly 200-page
report, updates the previous submission to the United Nations in 2006
under the George W. Bush administration. That previous report's policies
had been roundly criticized by environmentalists for their emphasis on
research and development and lack of concrete measures to reduce
emissions growth.
Virtually all the world's nations are required to submit summary reports
every three to five years to the United Nations Framework Convention on
Climate Change, which the United States ratified in 1992. The first
three U.S. reports were in 1994, 1997 and 2002.
But in recent years there have been growing concerns the parallel-track
Montreal Protocol signed by 195 nations could do more to address global
warming.
The ozone treaty, widely viewed as one of the most successful
environmental treaties ever, created most of the market for HFCs and
essentially eliminated the use of chlorofluorocarbons, or CFCs, blamed
for damaging the ozone layer.
Because they do not affect the ozone layer, HFCs broadly replaced CFCs
as coolants in refrigerators, air conditioners, fire extinguishers,
aerosol sprays, medical devices and semiconductors.
"Unless they are eliminated, HFCs and fluorinated gases will sabotage
efforts to combat global warming," said Samuel LaBudde, atmospheric
campaign director for the Environmental Investigation Agency, a
nonprofit watchdog group in Washington.
"We could and should use the Montreal Protocol to phase them out, just
as it's doing for chemicals that threaten to destroy the ozone layer,"
he said.
Copyright © 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
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