US feels safe from any trade threats over Kyoto
Date: 11-Oct-02
Country: EU
Author: Robin Pomeroy
The United States has been portrayed as the global environmental villain by green groups since it pulled out of Kyoto climate change pact last year, and some campaigners would like to see legal and trade sanctions against Washington.
U.S. Senior Climate Negotiator Harlan Watson said he doubted any country could successfully use trade rules to challenge the U.S. position on global warming, but said someone might try.
"The trade issue is a concern voiced by the business community," Watson said in response to questions from reporters while on a visit to Brussels.
Some environmentalists say U.S. exporters should be penalised as they will have an unfair competitive advantage over companies in places like Europe and Japan which will be forced to cut their emissions under the Kyoto pact.
"We do not believe that, based on what came out of Doha (the 2001 agreement to launch a new round of world trade talks), it will be a problem, but it won't prevent perhaps action being undertaken at some point."
"We do not believe we can be penalised for not entering a treaty regime that we have not agreed to."
Watson said he was even less concerned by legal challenges already launched against the United States, which emits around one quarter of the world's man-made "greenhouse gases" which are blamed by some scientists for blocking heat in the atmosphere.
The tiny Pacific island of Tuvalu - which faces annihilation from rising sea levels that some scientists think are a result of global warming - has threatened the United States with a lawsuit.
The U.S. city of Boulder, Colorado teamed up with two green groups to launch a case against U.S. government finance agencies for funding fossil fuel projects which, they claim, harm their interests because of the climate change threat.
"We don't take that seriously right now, but obviously it is a long-run concern," Watson said.
Watson will represent the United States at the next global climate change negotiations in New Delhi later this month, the first since the Kyoto pact was salvaged from the U.S. pull-out by an agreement in Bonn, Germany last year.
Although no longer in Kyoto, which requires developed countries to reduce their greenhouse emissions by 5.2 percent of 1990 levels by 2012, the United States remains a party to its parent treaty, the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.