US blocks global warming treaty deadline

Environment ministers from the industrialised capitalist powers on April 9 failed to agree to a deadline for the ratification of the agreement on global warming reached in Kyoto three years ago.

Ministers from the G-7 group of countries plus Russia, meeting in the Japanese city of Otsu, issued a communique stating that the Kyoto protocol would be ratified “as soon as possible.”

The European Union and Japan had been pushing for a commitment by all participants to agree to the protocol's provisions by 2002, which call for the major industrialised powers to reduce greenhouse emissions by an average of 5.2% from 1990 levels between 2008 and 2012. Under the protocol, the US must reduce emissions by 7%. With around 4.5% of the world's population, in 1990 the US emitted 36.1% of all greenhouse gases.

Ministers from the United States and Canada resisted imposing a specific deadline for ratification. US Congress, at the behest of a powerful coalition of mining and car corporations, has refused to ratify the treaty.

The US representative at the Otsu meeting, W. Michael McCabe, said the US government could not agree to a deadline without the approval of Congress as it would be inconsistent with “political realities”.

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