After years at opposite sides of the fence about how to address climate change, the United States and European Union (EU) have agreed to start a bilateral dialog about the issue.
 | "There is no precedent of any voluntary initiative that has really worked," says Matthias Kopp of WWF Germany. |
Closing a EU-US summit in Vienna on June 21, US President George W. Bush and his EU counterpart José Manuel Barroso announced the "High-Level Dialogue on Climate Change, Clean Energy and Sustainable Development."
Some of those who perceive the EU-US deadlock over climate change - and particularly dispute over the Kyoto Protocol - as hindering the global effort to slow climate change have been encouraged by the bilateral initiative.
"It is remarkable," says Sascha Müller-Kraenner, EU-US environmental policy expert at the Heinrich Böll Foundation in Berlin. "It is the first agreement that makes positive reference to the UN processes, and suggests an acceptance of the Kyoto Protocol as the basis of future approaches."
Addressing a press conference in Vienna, Bush suggested that a key component of the forthcoming EU-US dialog would be finding a way to "diversify away from oil" through the development and exchange of technology.
Bush said the coming years could "be a very interesting period for us as new technologies develop, and we're willing to share those technologies."
Embracing diverse approaches
Despite these overtures, however, the United States still seems unprepared to join EU member states in ratifying the Kyoto Protocol, the 1997 amendment to a UN agreement that imposes mandatory national limits on greenhouse gas emissions.
The Bush administration has instead echoed its preference for voluntary measures to cut emissions. A recent climate pact involving the United States and Asia-Pacific countries - including China, Australia and India - relies on voluntary initiatives, such as technology exchange and investment in developing renewable sources of energy.
It is the US aversion to mandatory greenhouse gas emissions targets where some critics see an important flaw in recent US climate policy.
"I would be happy to be wrong here, but there is nothing in (the EU-US dialog) that points to a serious initiative so far," says Matthias Kopp, an expert at the Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF) in Germany.
"There is no precedent of any voluntary initiative that has really worked, let alone on the scale required as fossil-fuel-based power generation is on the rise everywhere on this planet."
But as Sascha Müller-Kraenner suggests, multilateral approaches will call for some flexibility on the part of the European nations and other countries involved in international climate policymaking. This could mean finding a place for US affinity for voluntary, non-binding measures.
"At some point we have to get countries like the United States and China on board," says Müller-Kraenner of international climate policy efforts. "This may require a degree of accommodation to their approaches to the issue."
Guarded optimism
European and US statesmen will have the chance to talk at the meeting of G8 industrialized nations in Russia in mid-July, though no substantial movement is expected on climate change issues.
Most observers expect energy and energy security issues to be higher on the G8 and EU-US agendas than climate change. This prioritization of energy issues (security and prices) over concern for the climate partly reflects the prevailing attitudes of US government and public opinion.
“Polls show that the majority of Americans are concerned about climate change, but it is down the list of priorities below security and terrorism, energy prices, and even other environmental concerns such as water quality,” says Janet Sawin of the Worldwatch Institute in Washington D.C.
“It does seem that things are now beginning to change due to a combination of factors, ranging from Hurricane Katrina last fall to Al Gore's movie "An Inconvenient Truth," which opened in late May,” she adds.
Many experts are looking ahead to November and the UN climate conference in Nairobi, Kenya, where the long process of adapting the Kyoto Protocol for the long-term future will continue. Meanwhile, the mood regarding the long-term opportunities of EU-US cooperation seems to be one of guarded optimism.
"It is a good sign that these two important players in world politics do seem to be willing to work together again," says Kopp. "But if the pace of this cooperation is determined by smallest steps only, then there is nothing much to be gained here."
editor: Valdis Wish
publishing date: July 11, 2006
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