(China Daily)
Updated: 2007-09-28 07:16

The world's major economies yesterday gathered in Washington to discuss climate change and the ways to tackle it, on the heels of the just-concluded higher level UN meeting.

The two-day conference was called by US President George W. Bush, whose administration has been criticized for its refusal to adopt mandatory limits for climate-warming emissions.

The European Union and the world's leading industrialized countries such as US, France, Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom, Japan, Canada were present.

China and other major developing nations such as India, Brazil, Mexico were also in attendence.

This gathering of major economies follows a high-level UN meeting on Monday that drew more than 80 heads of state and government to focus on the problem of global warming.

At its conclusion, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said he saw a "major political commitment" to seek a global solution to the problem at future UN discussions in December in Bali, Indonesia. At the UN and in Washington before the US State Department meeting, envoys and lawmakers called on the US to take a leading role.

"US leadership in the area of climate change is essential, not only because it is a big emitter of greenhouse gases, but because the US is on the cutting edge of developing technological solutions and bringing them to the global market," said special UN climate envoys Gro Harlem Brundtland, Ricardo Lagos Escobar and Han Seung-soo at a Capitol Hill briefing.

A letter to Bush from members of Congress, led by Democrat Ed Markey, who chairs the House of Representatives global warming committee, urged mandatory curbs on carbon dioxide emissions: "We need actual reductions in global warming pollution, not aspirational goals."

"What would really galvanize the international efforts on climate would be a set of policies in the US to put the US on a fast track to building a low carbon economy," John Ashton, Britain's climate envoy, said. The Washington talks are not formal climate negotiations, but rather an airing of views on greenhouse gases, energy security, technology development and commercialization, financing - and a daylong closed-door session on "process and principles for setting a long-term goal" to cut the human-caused emissions that spur climate change.

Agencies

(China Daily 09/28/2007 page8)