Originally published February 13 2006
Critics raise doubts about Bush's Asian environmental partnership
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
Teaming up with Australia, President Bush has committed to the Asia Pacific Partnership for Clean Development and Climate, an alternative to the Kyoto Protocol that critics say lacks any strong resolution or initiative.
The United States and Australia, the only rich nations to reject the United Nations' Kyoto Protocol, meant to limit warming, will team up with China, India, Japan and South Korea to promote technology like "clean coal" or ways to bury heat-trapping gases.
Some Kyoto Protocol backers reckon that President George W. Bush, via the Asia Pacific Partnership for Clean Development and Climate, is trusting too much in clean-technology breakthroughs that might never come or even be sufficient if they do.
"We welcome (technology pacts) as part of efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but they won't do the trick," a European Commission representative said of the six-nation plan, to be launched in Sydney, Australia, on Wednesday and Thursday.
"If we are serious about reductions, the Kyoto Protocol is the way to go."
Kyoto imposes caps on emissions of greenhouse gases by about 40 countries.
The United States, the world's top emitter of such gases, shuns such limits.
Many experts doubt that companies will invest enough in new clean-energy technology, unless they get a carrot-and-stick approach to help stave off what could be disastrous climate changes ranging from desertification to rising sea levels.
"The new partnership has no real drivers," said David Doniger, of the Washington-based Natural Resources Defense Council.
"A problem of this size is not going to be solved by a small amount of money and cheerleading."
Doniger, who was a U.S. climate negotiator under President Bill Clinton, urged the creation of environmental markets, like in the European Union, to give clean-energy producers an advantage over burners of dirty fossil fuels.
"Technologies do not just appear from nowhere; they have to be developed, mostly in response to new markets," echoed Jonathan Kohler, an economist at England's Cambridge University.
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