AUSTRALIA: Six of the world's major polluters ended climate talks yesterday with a multi-million-dollar pledge to develop clean energy, but said polluting fossil-fuels would continue to underpin their economies for generations.
Green groups, which labelled the six-nation climate-change talks a sham, said the money was a token and the two-day meeting had failed to make serious commitments to fight global warming.
In a communique at the end of the talks, the six nations did not set any targets to cut greenhouse gases.
Instead, they stressed the need for business to help find ways of cutting greenhouse emissions without hurting fossil fuels or impacting on the growing demand for energy, particularly in China and India.
"What this is, is ... a harnessing of the private sector. It is recognising the fact that it is the private sector that makes the investment decisions, in all of the countries," US energy secretary Sam Bodman said.
The Sydney meeting grouped the United States, China, Japan, India, South Korea and Australia, which together account for nearly half the world's greenhouse gases emitted by mankind.
It was the inaugural meeting of the Asia Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate, which the six set up as an alternative way to tackle global warming outside the Kyoto Protocol by focusing on clean-energy technology.
A goal of the partnership is to convince industry to take the lead in developing and installing cleaner energy that cuts carbon dioxide and other by-products of burning fossil fuels that are warming the atmosphere and threatening weather chaos.
Some of the world's big mining and energy firms attended the talks and pledged to improve efficiency.
The communique said reductions in greenhouse gases must be achieved without hindering economic growth. "We recognise that fossil fuels underpin our economies, and will be an enduring reality for our lifetimes and beyond," it said.
Green groups condemned the talks as nothing more than a "coal pact" between the world's big polluters and fossil-fuel firms, such as Exxon Mobil and Rio Tinto, and a missed opportunity to commit to renewable energy sources.
The partnership agreed to set up eight industry-based taskforces to develop new clean energy schemes that would be backed by the technology fund.
The taskforces will submit plans by mid-2006. - (Reuters)