Washington: The White House is struggling to agree on a target to curb greenhouse gas emissions for an international treaty due to be signed in Kyoto, Japan in December, writes Joe Carroll. However, new figures show US emissions rose sharply last year.
The increase in carbon dioxide from American cars, factories and power plants, makes it more difficult for President Clinton to propose targets acceptable to the EU at a meeting in Bonn later this week. The EU wants to set emission levels by industrialised countries at 15 per cent below 1990 levels by 2010, but the US wants a more gradual decrease.
Mr Clinton's pledge in 1993 to reduce US emissions to their 1990 level by 2000 has turned out to be an embarrassing failure. At the current rate of growth (3.34 for 1996), US emissions will be 13 per cent above the 1990 level by the end of the century.