WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Bush administration, which is pushing alternatives to the Kyoto treaty on global warming, unveiled a six-nation pact on Wednesday that promotes the use of technology to cut greenhouse gas emissions.
The deal between the United States, Japan, Australia, China, India and South Korea will build on existing bilateral agreements on technology sharing. It includes no Kyoto-style caps on emissions.
President Bush said in a statement the Asia-Pacific partnership, which will be formally introduced in the Laotion capital Vientiane, would address global warming while promoting economic development.
But environmentalists criticized it as an attempt by Washington to create a distraction ahead of U.N. talks in November in Montreal that will focus on how to widen Kyoto to include developing nations after 2012.
The approach of looking to technology for solutions to global warming was emphasized by Bush at the Group of Eight summit in Scotland when he called for a “post-Kyoto era.”
The United States, which creates the biggest share of greenhouse emissions, and Australia are the only developed nations outside Kyoto. But Japan, China, India and South Korea have ratified Kyoto, which demands cuts in greenhouse emissions by 5.2 percent below 1990 levels by 2008-2012.
“As far as I can tell, there’s really nothing new here,” said Jeff Fielder, an analyst at the New York-based Natural Resources Defense Council. He said that the bilateral agreements already served the purpose of technology sharing but said companies will not have an incentive to deploy it without a strong signal sent by mandatory limits.
“I think this is aimed at complicating the Montreal talks,” Fielder added.
Jim Connaughton, chairman of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, said there was no attempt to undermine Kyoto.
“With respect to the Kyoto framework it will complement the obligations that that has for some countries. It will not replace the Kyoto protocol. The Kyoto protocol remains in place,” Connaughton told reporters in a conference call.
He said that the countries in the Asia-Pacific pact together represent about 50 percent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions and a “substantial” portion of the world’s gross domestic product.
Australian Environment Minister Ian Campbell said the countries had been quietly working on the pact for months.
“It’s quite clear the Kyoto protocol won’t get the world to where it wants to go … We have got to find something that works better — Australia is working on that with partners around the world,” Campbell told reporters.
U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick will join with other diplomats for the Vientiane unveiling.
The process will get off the ground when Secretary State of State Condoleezza Rice and Secretary of Energy Sam Bodman meet their counterparts from the other signatory countries later this year.
Bush believes Kyoto would threaten the U.S. economy even though many of his allies see it as a vital step to brake a rise in temperatures they fear could trigger more floods, storms, lift sea levels and drive thousands of species to extinction.
Some environmentalists said they worried one motivation for Washington was to lure China and India away from the Kyoto talks.
Greenpeace climate policy director Steve Sawyer said the pact might be “a benign technology agreement” but “on the other hand, this could be the first foray by the Americans and Australians to knock Kyoto on the head.”
The Kyoto protocol, first agreed in 1997, came into force in February after Russia ratified it.
As economies expand, the world is consuming more energy and is producing more greenhouse gas emissions, particularly carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels such as coal in power plants and petrol in cars.
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