Agence France Presse August 28, 2002 Wednesday 4:16 PM
Eastern Time SECTION: Financial Pages LENGTH: 657 words
HEADLINE: US slammed by friends over climate pact at Earth
Summit BYLINE: ODILE MEUVRET DATELINE: JOHANNESBURG,
Aug 28
BODY: The United States came under fire from friends and
critics alike at the Earth Summit Wednesday for ditching
the Kyoto Protocol, with US corporate giants, including two
oil companies, joining Greenpeace to demand the climate
treaty be ratified. Delegates were stunned to see the
environmental group join forces with a corporate lobby, the
World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD),
whose ranks include firms that have been vilified by green
activists. Just hours earlier, Japan appealed to the United
States, its ally, to become a Kyoto ratifier. Greenpeace
International political director Remi Parmentier stood
side-by- side with BCSD President Bjorn Stigson, and both
men read separate paragraphs from a joint statement,
appealing to government leaders meeting in Johannesburg
next week to combat the global warming threat. Without
naming the United States or President George W. Bush, they
declared uncertainty about Kyoto's future was creating "a
political environment which is not good for business, and
indeed it's not good for humanity."

 "Despite our well-known differences, we have found
ourselves frustrated by a lack of political will and
decisiveness of the governnments to fulfill their
commitments under the (1992) Rio (Earth Summit)
agreements," they said. They added: "Given the seriousness
of the risk of climate change and the need to reduce
greenhouse gas emissions, we are shelving our differences
on other issues on this occasion, and we call on
governments to be responsible and to build the
international framework to tackle climate change on the
basis of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and
its Kyoto Protocol. "(...) We are also calling on
governments to put their own differences aside and to
coooperate more fully to make the goals of greenhouse gas
emission reductions a reality."

 Earlier, Japanese Environment Minister Hiroshi Ohki said
that the protocol, agreed in the Japanese city of Kyoto in
1997, was the cornerstone of efforts to curb greenhouse-gas
pollution blamed for climate change. "Japan calls upon the
United States of America, the largest emitter of greenhouse
gases, to ratify the Kyoto Protocol," Ohki said at a
seminar here. Japan was a close US ally in the talks to
complete Kyoto, and has repeatedly appealed to Washington
to back the charter. The WBCSD has been a powerful voice
for business in the arena of sustainable development -- the
idea that economic growth and protecting the environment
should go hand-in-hand. It has clashed with
environmentalists many times over such issues as monitoring
of corporate activities that affect the environment, and
whether environment problems should be tackled by voluntary
or regulatory means. Its rollcall comprises 163
multinational corporations, more than two dozen of them
American. US-listed members include ChevronTexaco and
Conoco in oil and gas, as well as DuPont (chemicals) and
Alcoa (aluminium), and the German-US car behemoth
DaimlerChrysler. Others include the British oil giant BP,
Japan's Honda and the French tyre firm Michelin. The Kyoto
Protocol requires rich industrialised countries to trim
output of carbon-based gases by a deadline of 2008-2012.

 Bush abandoned it in March 2001, shortly after taking
office. He complained it would be too costly for the US
economy and unfair because it did not require big emerging
countries such as China and India to make targeted
reductions in their own pollution. The accord will take
effect once it has been ratified by at least 55 countries
accounting for at least 55 percent of carbon dioxide
pollution as of 1990 levels. Ratification by Russia, the
last major industrial signatory, is vital, but experts at
the Earth Summit in Johannesburg say this is unlikely to
happen before 2003. The United States accounts by itself
for around a quarter of global emissions of greenhouse
gases, much of it generated by cars.