Negotiations fail as nations dispute terms of international climate treaty

The failure to reach an agreement on measures to tackle global warming has disappointed governments and environmentalists worldwide. \nLast week, last-minute attempts by the United Kingdom to broker a compromise between the European Union and the United States were unsuccessful at the United Nations climate conference in the Netherlands. \nThe executive director of the U.N. Environment Program, Klaus Topfer, said in a press release he was "shocked and disappointed" at the outcome of the summit. \nThe talks were aimed at putting into effect an international climate treaty reached in Kyoto, Japan, in 1997. It called for a 5 percent average cut in developed countries' gas emissions, which scientists hold to be responsible for what they regard as a rapid rise in global temperatures. \n "Ratification of the Kyoto Protocol will now be delayed," said Daniel Becker, director of the Sierra Club's Global Warming and Energy Program. \nThe E.U.-U.S. dispute was concerned a U.S. plan to allow developed nations to count carbon dioxide absorbed by forests -- so-called carbon sinks -- against emissions reduction targets. \n"Forests absorb carbon, that is true. But in America there is a history behind it. In the 1920s, when people gave up farming, all the forests that had been cut grew back," said Emilio Moran, director of the Anthropological Center for Training in Global and Environmental Change at IU.\n"But they were secondary forests: those in Indiana, Ohio and upper New York. So, trying to say that America has a large forest cover that is sequestering more carbon dioxide than other countries is not a viable argument. The other countries are at the stage we were years ago. It is inadvertent and a short-term solution, trees reach a saturation point very easily, when they will not absorb anymore dioxide. So, by that argument, one should cut down those trees once they stop absorbing dioxide and plant new ones." \nThe European Union fears countries might claim all their greenhouse gases are being absorbed by carbonsinks so they do not need to make any actual reductions in the pollution they emit from chimneys, vehicle exhausts and other sources.\n"Australia, Canada and Japan have joined the bandwagon and are claiming that they cannot reach targets without counting credits for carbon sinks," Moran said. \nMost environmental groups see this as just another way to get around the economics of achieving Kyoto targets without much action. \n"If governments continue to act irresponsibly, as they have done this week, then people from rich countries should prepare to build ever higher and wider dikes, from which they can watch the rest of the world suffer and drown from climate change. Either that or demand that politicians give them access to the solutions to climate change in the form of clean energy and energy efficiency," Greenpeace, an organization committed to reducing temperatures and warming, said in a press release. \nMeanwhile, Becker said America is weakening the process to reduce emissions. "The United States' push to weaken the Kyoto agreement is turning it into the Emperor's New Treaty," he said. "Some claim to see a rich tapestry of action where none exists. But, if you examine the United States' proposal, you will find it has lost its environmental integrity."\n"Instead of producing cleaner cars, the U.S.'s proposal would allow polluters to plant forests of saplings abroad," Becker said. "The U.S. is pushing a bogus 'emissions trading' scheme that substitutes delay for action"