WIRE:11/19/2000 15:10:00 ET U.S. Senators Wary of Greenhouse Gas Pact THE HAGUE (Reuters) - Global warming is a serious issue, but the United States will not accept any mandate to cut its greenhouse gas emissions that does not include action by developing nations, two U.S. senators said Sunday. Republican Senators Chuck Hagel from Nebraska and Larry Craig from Idaho also stressed that any emission cuts in greenhouse gases -- widely believed to contribute to global warming -- must not damage the U.S. economy. Those two caveats remain the key stumbling block to U.S. Congressional acceptance of the agreement to cut greenhouse gases laid out in Kyoto in 1997, said Hagel and Craig, both longtime critics of the plan. "It seems to me to be politically possible" to pass the Kyoto emissions cuts if both those conditions are met, Hagel said. "But that seems a long way away." Hagel and Craig traveled to the U.N. conference in The Hague where some 185 governments are trying to hammer out a compromise to cut greenhouse gas emissions. Scientists say the emissions will help boost temperatures by 1.5 to 6.0 degrees Centigrade (2.7 to 10.8 degrees Fahrenheit) and cause sea levels to rise by as much as a meter (3.3 feet) during this century. Those changes will alter global weather patterns and lead to more extreme storms, like those that have ravaged Europe, Africa and Asia in recent months, scientists say. "It has been my position that the issue of climate change is complicated and real, and that we must pay attention to it," Hagel said. "The U.S. takes its responsibility seriously," he added. "But some common sense should be applied." CRITICAL OF KYOTO PROTOCOL Hagel and Craig were critical of the Kyoto Protocol, which calls for industrialized nations to cut greenhouse gas emissions by an average of five percent from 1990 levels by 2008-2012, but places no restrictions on countries such as China, which they say will overtake the U.S. as the world"s number one polluter in the coming years. Such a pact, they said, would undermine the basis of the Kyoto Protocol by allowing those countries to continue growing their greenhouse gas emissions. If that happens, "then you don"t accomplish what the protocol set out to do," Hagel said. "If the United States is going to penalize itself and its economy...without a tangible result, what sense does that make," he said. Many in the United States are also reluctant to okay a deal from the U.N. conference that would prevent the U.S. from claiming "flexible mechanism" credits for its Kyoto targets by building nuclear power and hydroelectric generation in developing countries, Craig said. "I"m a bit frustrated when they come and they want to take these off the table," he said. Technology has been a key driver for cleaner power production in the United States, he said, and many of those advances are being used by China to clean up its environment. "The phenomenal change that"s happening today...is largely because of the participation of U.S. technology," he said. "To take that technology off the table will not help China become less of a polluter." U.S. WORLD"S LARGEST GAS PRODUCER Although the United States is the world"s largest producer of greenhouse gases, churning out 24 percent of the world"s emissions, its pollution growth has slowed to about one percent annually since 1990 versus forecasts of four percent, largely because of cleaner technology. "We"ve done a good job...that"s technology driving that, that"s science driving that, not a U.N. mandate," said Hagel. The senators said they supported the proposal of the U.S. negotiators at the conference to count U.S. forests and farmland as "sinks" which soak up carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, but added that the U.S. must be allowed to use all the flexible mechanisms under discussion to reach its Kyoto targets. The European Union has blasted the U.S. plan as a "free gift," and called for a cap on the flexible mechanisms which would force states to meet at least half their targets through reduced use of fossil fuels and cleaner transport systems. The powerful U.S. farm lobby has indicated it could support a plan that gives farmers cash for utilizing cleaner practices, although the senators played down the possibility that would swing the U.S. Congress in favor of the emission cuts. "It would help, but politically we must go well beyond sinks," Hagel said. |