US President George Bush has reiterated that the United States will not join any international regime on climate change unilaterally and sacrifice American industry and jobs, unless such a treaty binds the burgeoning economies of India and China to emission targets.
He was speaking on climate change at a meeting of the world's leading greenhouse gas emission countries in Paris.
Bush, who had last September launched this series of meetings on climate change, said the US remained committed to any post-Kyoto regime that encompasses all major economies but is not ready to give anybody 'a free ride'.
"The Kyoto Protocol," he said, "would have required the United States to drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The impact of this agreement, however, would have been to limit our economic growth and to shift American jobs to other countries, while allowing major developing nations to increase their emissions."
Bush said, "Unilaterally imposed regulatory costs is a wrong way as that puts American businesses at a disadvantage with their competitors abroad, which would simply drive American jobs overseas and increase emissions there. The right way, is to ensure that all major economies are bound to take action and to work cooperatively with our partners for a fair and effective international climate agreement."
He said, "Countries like China and India are experiencing rapid economic growth and that's good for their people and it's good for the world."
But he argued that "this also means that they are emitting increasingly large quantities of greenhouse gases, which has consequences for the entire global climate."
Bush said this was why "the United States has launched -- and the G8 has embraced -- a new process that brings together the countries responsible for most of the world's emissions," and were working "toward a climate agreement that includes meaningful participation of every major economy and gives none a free ride."
"In support of this process, and based on technology advances and strong new policy, it is time for the US to look beyond 2012 (when the Kyoto Protocol expires) and to take the next step," he said.
The US president announced a new national goal, which he said would "stop the growth of US greenhouse gas emissions by 2025," and do it not by mandatory cuts but voluntary action.
Bush further said, "We're willing to include this plan in a binding international agreement, so long as our fellow major economies are prepared to include their plans in such an agreement."
He said it would be wrong "to threaten punitive tariffs and protectionist barriers, start a carbon-based global trade war, and to stifle the diffusion of new technologies. The right way is to work to make advanced technology affordable and available in the developing world by lowering trade barriers, creating a global free market for clean energy technologies, and enhancing international cooperation and technology investment."
When asked what kind of influence Bush could have in his lame-duck presidency that has no more than eight months remaining, James Connaughton, chairman of the White House's Council on Environmental Quality, said it should not be forgotten that it was the president who had brought together 17 of the world's largest economies together to discuss a post-Kyoto regime.
He also said that the president had also "led the way on this new international agreement to phase out the HCFCs (hydroflurocarbons), which will reduce emissions by as much or more than the Kyoto Protocol and that's an agreement that had China and India on it."
Bush's White House spokeswoman Dana Perino also strongly defended her boss saying that Bush was not new to the climate change debate even though the Democrats, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and others have ridiculed his efforts as too little, too late.
Perino said, Bush had started talking about a post-Kyoto initiative way back in May 2007, "and he said, I will lead this effort, and I will lead it in a way that keeps China and India at the table, which is critical for having the political consensus, for everyone to have the will to actually move forward and get this done. Otherwise, it is going to fall apart."
But Indian Finance Minister P Chidambaram, who was in Washington over the weekend for the annual World Bank/IMF spring meetings, speaking at a World Bank breakfast meeting on climate change, slammed the US and other developed countries for creating the problem in the first place and now trying to coerce developing countries like India to carry more than their share of the burden.
"No discussion on climate change can be taken forward without underscoring the deep inequity in the causes and impacts of climate change," he said.
He argued that "the developed world has caused the problem with many decades of unsustainable development process. But it is the poorer countries that will be worse affected."
Chidambaram said, "The devastating climate impacts will undermine livelihoods and the way of life of millions of people and, undo many decades of development."
"Given their responsibility for causing the problem, the developed world has two clear obligation to massively reduce their greenhouse gas emissions, and to provide new and additional financial and technological help to the developing countries to manage mitigation as well as adaptation efforts," he said.
He said that India's greenhouse gas emissions "are among the lowest in per capita terms," but acknowledged that "they will, of course, inevitably increase as we endeavour to remove poverty and provide basic needs to all the people."
Chidambaram however noted that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had "categorically declared that even while pursuing development goals, India's per capita greenhouse gas emissions will always remain below the per capita greenhouse gas emissions of developed countries."
He then provided a laundry list of the unilateral steps India has taken to alleviate the problem of carbon emissions and said "we propose to bring out our National Action Program on Climate Change shortly. Further, we are also going to establish a permanent institutional mechanism to play a coordination role to explore and implement ideas on climate change and to take on the important responsibility of advocacy."
Chidambaram said what was most important in tackling the problem of climate change was "trust between developed and developing countries. There must be trust about the neutrality of processes or institutions through which agreements are implemented, money is disbursed or disputes are resolved."
"Climate justice must inform all efforts at international cooperation in this field. The solutions should include fair burden sharing and measures to realise sustainable patterns of consumption and production," he added.
Evidently, taking exception to US-led G-8 initiatives, Chidambaram said it should be only the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change that should be the basis for a global compact, anchored as it is in the well-established principle of equity and common but differentiated responsibility.