EU Visit Will "Pressure" The Decider On Post-Kyoto Emissions Framework - Times Of London

[hatrack]

George Bush will be challenged by Europe today to back a post-Kyoto climate change agreement that would involve developed countries making a 30 per cent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2020. The President rejected the Kyoto Protocol — which called for a US reduction of 7 per cent on 1990 levels by 2012 — as “fatally flawed” and likely to damage American industry.

EDIT

He is expected to repeat the dire warnings of economic disaster that were made in the Stern report last year. An EU study that will be published this week will paint an apocalyptic picture of thousands more people being killed because of climate change within a decade.

Mr Barroso will emphasise that the discovery of alternatives to fossil fuels would protect the US against long-term supply uncertainty from the Middle East and Russia.

EDIT

Mr Bush has softened his once-sceptical language on climate change. He has said repeatedly that he now accepts that it is a serious problem. EU officials were heartened by the President’s State of the Union address last year, in which he stated that the US was “addicted to oil” and should “move beyond a petroleum-based economy”.

EDIT

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-2536616,00.html