U.S. Leads International Pact on Global Warming

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Richard Morrison, 202.331.2273

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<?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags” />Washington, D.C., July 28, 2005—The White House announced yesterday that the United States was leading a group of Pacific nations in a new agreement on global warming. The six-nation plan emphasizes the strategy of creating new energy technologies and developing cleaner-burning fuels to address concerns about the possible future impacts of climate change.

The United States was joined by Australia, China, India, South Korea and Japan in releasing a “vision statement” for the new initiative, which emphasized the need for increased access to affordable and reliable energy in the developing world, and flexibility in reaching the group’s environmental goals.

“Despite some diplomatic language about the agreement not replacing the Kyoto Protocol, this new approach to managing greenhouse gas emissions by some of the world’s largest energy-consuming nations clearly rejects Kyoto’s inflexible, economically destructive approach,” said Competitive Enterprise Institute Director of Global Warming Policy Myron Ebell. “Whatever the challenges future climate change may bring, a focus on new technologies and robust economic growth will always be our best strategy.”

The announcement of the new program, the Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate, comes on the heels of the G8 Summit in Scotland where the assembled world leaders took a page from President Bush’s climate policy in issuing a concluding statement on global warming which again stressed technological transformation and omitted any endorsement of mandatory reductions in energy use.

“This reaffirms the European Union as increasingly isolated,” said CEI Senior Fellow Christopher C. Horner. “Kyoto never was anything but a pan-European treaty, plus Japan and Canada. As such, this makes it equally clear that the Kyoto approach is living in the past.  The world has moved on despite EU insistence on a failed model.”