>Published on Sunday, November 19, 2000 in the Observer of London
>
>US Plays Dirty As Planet Chokes
>
>Squabbles as America fights to avoid reducing emissions
> http://www.commondreams.org/headlines/111900-02.htm
>by Robin McKie at The Hague
>
>It took a surprisingly short time to sandbag the Hague yesterday. In
>only two hours, environmentalists managed to surround the city's great
>conference centre with a 5ft wall made up of 50,000 sacks filled with
>soil and grit.
>
>The activists - some from Latvia and Estonia, a few from Japan, several
>coach-loads from Britain and hundreds from other nations - had gathered
>to lay siege to the building in which diplomats and civil servants were
>trying to thrash out ground rules for limiting global warming. It was a
>manoeuvre replete with irony.
>
>Rising industrial emissions of carbon dioxide are now heating the world
>alarmingly, say scientists, and are accelerating natural climatic
>warming, threatening to melt ice caps and flood low-lying areas. Hence
>the sandbag, a particularly potent symbol in climate-vulnerable Holland.
>
>However, the real eyebrow-raiser was the speed of the Friends of the
>Earth stunt which contrasted starkly with the lumbering negotiations
>that have been taking place within the convention centre. For the past
>week, delegates have been trying to hammer out a framework for a
>climate-saving deal that their ministerial bosses can then knock into
>shape when they arrive tomorrow.
>
>There have been few signs they are going to succeed. Despite evidence
>that the greenhouse effect is now at its strongest for 20 million years,
>that Europe's growing season has lengthened by 11 days in the past
>century and that scientists are predicting all Arctic ice will have
>disappeared by 2080, delegates remain obsessed with the minutiae of
>conference protocol. As one leading UK negotiator put it: 'This could
>turn out to be the most important conference in human history, yet all
>we get is haggling over trivia.'
>
>These squabbles threaten to erupt into full-scale war, particularly
>between the United States and Europe, which began an alarming exchange
>of insults late last week. One European Union statement even accused the
>Americans of 'threatening the integrity' of the entire climate change
>convention.
>
>At heart, the problem is simple: how can the world halt the global
>warming that is increasing global temperatures, sea levels and climatic
>instability? At the Kyoto environment summit three years ago, the
>industrialised nations agreed, in principle, to reduce carbon dioxide
>emissions to a figure 7 per cent below their 1990 output. Unfortunately,
>no one has been able to agree how to achieve this, or even to ratify the
>Kyoto summit. That is the purpose of the Hague summit.
>
>The prime problem is America, the world's greatest emitter of carbon
>dioxide, which presses, with increasing insistence, that it should be
>spared from reducing its output and should instead be allowed to create
>new forests, both in the US and the Third World. These trees and plants,
>known collectively as carbon sinks, will soak up all that nasty carbon
>dioxide, say US delegates, and will obviate the need for Americans to
>abandon their profligacy.
>[snip]
>
>At the end of the conference its organiser, the United Nations, hopes
>that a group of developed nations that represent a total output of 55
>per cent of all carbon dioxide emissions will be able to ratify the
>Kyoto protocol. If that magic number is reached, the deal becomes an
>international treaty. However, without the co-operation of the US, which
>accounts for 24 per cent of the world's total output of carbon dioxide,
>there is little likelihood of success.
>
>And so the world's nations will square up to their climatic 'High Noon'
>at the Hague tomorrow. On one side, Europe - led by Britain and Germany
>and supported by the developing nations and green groups - is pressing
>for real emission cuts. On the other, the US is backed by Canada,
>Australia and Japan, nations which are desperate to avoid taking any
>action that might risk the wrath of voters.
>
>These, then, are the hate figures of the environment movement, a motley
>crew that also includes any representative of an oil company, China
>which wants to build more nuclear power stations and the
>environmentalists' special bogeyman, Saudi Arabia, which is trying to
>scupper the entire Kyoto protocol because it fears a downturn in petrol
>use.
>[snip]
>
>) Guardian Newspapers Limited 2000
>) Copyrighted 1997-2000 All Rights Reserved.
>Common Dreams. www.commondreams.org