Negotiations leading up to the Group of Eight (G-8) summit that begins in Heiligendamm, Germany on Wednesday stalled when the U.S. bluntly objected to the host country’s global warming declaration.
Germany’s proposal calls for limiting the global temperature rise this century to 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit (2 degrees Celsius) and cutting global warming emissions to 50 percent below 1990 levels by 2050. But Bush administration officials rejected those mandatory emissions targets, as well as calls to raise energy efficiencies 20 percent by 2020. They also opposed a statement that reads, “We acknowledge that the U.N. climate process is an appropriate forum for negotiating future global action on climate change."
So late last week, President Bush went on the offensive and proposed his own climate change goal. He urged 15 major nations – including China and India – to agree by the end of next year on a global target for reducing greenhouse gases. Rather than a specific goal like Germany’s 3.6 degrees reduction, Bush called for nations to hold a series of meetings, beginning this fall, to set a global goal and then each nation then would decide how to reach that goal. At the same time, the White House specifically registered its opposition to a global cap-and-trade program.
Although German Chancellor Angela Merkel welcomed Bush’s “new determination” to fight climate change, any goal must absolutely be part of a U.N. framework. Furthermore, she said in an interview with the German magazine Der Spiegel that her proposals for a 3.6 degrees cut in emissions “are non-negotiable as far as I am concerned.”