THE ENVIRONMENT: President Bush's alternative to Kyoto will have even less of an impact on global warming, writes Frank McDonald, Environment Editor
Nobody could pretend that the Kyoto Protocol, adopted four years ago last December, will save the world from the worst effects of climate change. It is merely a step in the right direction towards reducing the greenhouse gas emissions blamed for causing global warming.
It is now nearly a year since President Bush shocked even his allies by announcing that the US - which is responsible for a quarter of these emissions - was pulling out of the Kyoto process, because of fears that mandatory cuts would hurt its economic prospects.
Adopting a voluntary domestic approach flies in the face of one overwhelming reality - that climate change is a global problem requiring a global approach.
It cannot be confronted by indulging in the smoke-and-mirrors exercise announced in Washington yesterday, because what Mr Bush is proposing will not achieve the average 5 per cent cut on 1990 emission levels envisaged by Kyoto.
His plan is predicated merely on reducing the "energy intensity" of projected economic growth over the next decade by voluntary means.
According to the White House, greenhouse gas emissions would be cut from 183 metric tons per $1 million of GDP in 2002 to 151 metric tons per $1 million of projected GDP by 2012. But Greenpeace calculated that this would result in a 29 per cent increase in emissions.
As Mr Thomas Legge, a climate specialist at the Brussels-based Centre for European Policy Studies, told the Guardian: "You can say with some certainty that greenhouse gas intensity targets will not lead to absolute reductions [in emissions], unless the economy shrinks."
It would be difficult to disagree with Mr Stephan Singer of the World Wide Fund for Nature, who said Mr Bush's plan mocks the UN Climate Change Convention - signed by his own father at the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro - which aimed at stabilising emissions at 1990 levels.
"Give me chastity and continence, but not yet," Saint Augustine wrote many moons ago.
The truth is that the US remains firmly wedded to a fossil fuel economy run by such powerful vested interests that its political leaders cannot afford to take on - least of all Mr Bush.
The Republicans' energy policy, overseen by Vice-President Dick Cheney, counted the now-bankrupt Enron among its chief contributors and there can be no doubt that other oil, coal, gas and motor manufacturing corporations continue to have the ear of the White House. And the nuclear lobby, too.
Mr Bush does not see carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas, as a pollutant, which is technically true. But even for major pollutants such as sulphur dioxide, nitrogen oxide and mercury, which cause smog and death, US power companies are being given until 2010 to limit emissions.
It is also deeply ironic that Mr Bush's announcement of a voluntary approach to global warming came hot on the heels of legislation in smog-prone California that would force motor manufacturers to cut emissions from cars by 2005 - a measure they vigorously opposed.
From an EU viewpoint, the most worrying aspect of the announcement is that it was made just days before the US President meets the Japanese Prime Minister, Mr Junichiro Koizumi, in Tokyo on Monday - as Japan's commitment is crucial to implementing the Kyoto regime.
Japan's continued support is needed to make up the numbers required to give it the force of international law. And while it remains committed to the treaty agreed in its ancient capital, environmentalists fear that the US may seek to persuade Japan to go down the voluntary route.
If Mr Bush was to succeed in "de-coupling" Japan from the industrialised countries which have signed up for Kyoto, the protocol - and the deal on its implementation reached in Bonn and Marrakech last year - would collapse. And that would be a global tragedy.