Bush Will Skip Today's UN Climate Talks, But Will Drop In For Dinner Tonight - NYT [View All]

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WASHINGTON, Sept. 23 — Dozens of world leaders are to gather at the United Nations on Monday for a full agenda of talks on how to fight global warming, and President Bush is skipping all the day’s events but the dinner. His focus instead is on his own gathering of leaders in Washington later this week, a meeting with the same stated goal, a reduction in the emissions blamed for climate change, but a fundamentally different idea of how to achieve it.

Mr. Bush’s aides say that the parallel meeting does not compete against the United Nations’ process — hijacking it, as his critics charge. They say that Mr. Bush hopes to persuade the nations that produce 90 percent of the world’s emissions to come to a consensus that would allow each, including the United States, to set its own policies rather than having limits imposed by binding international treaty.
It’s our philosophy that each nation has the sovereign capacity to decide for itself what its own portfolio of policies should be,” said James L. Connaughton, the president’s chief environmental adviser.

Mr. Bush’s approach sets the stage for a new round of diplomatic confrontation. And it raises the prospect that he could once again put the United States in the position of objecting to any binding international agreement intended to slow or reverse the emissions linked to rising temperatures.

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Briefing reporters before the week’s meetings, senior aides emphasized that each nation should decide for itself how to reduce emissions. “The president’s central proposition is really this: Tackling global climate change requires all major economies developed and developing to work together,” said Dan Price, a deputy national security adviser. “And it requires each to make a contribution consistent with its national circumstances.” Critics argue that the administration’s approach is not aggressive enough because it remains essentially voluntary. “There’s no serious environmental problem that’s ever been solved by voluntary measures,” said David Doniger, climate policy director at the National Resources Defense Council.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/24/world/24warming.html?_r=1&ref=environment&oref=slogin