Climate Change Smackdown

Things are hotting up in Montreal as the current round of Kyoto negotiations wind down today. First, there's this news from the London Guardian:

The environment secretary, Margaret Beckett, this morning warned that make-or-break talks in Montreal on a successor treaty to Kyoto had "started to go sour".

The negotiations, aimed at bringing onboard the US and developing nations for some form of carbon emission reduction after 2012, end this weekend, and are looking increasingly likely to end in a stalemate.
[...]
The United States were still saying they had a lot of concerns but that was "par for the course, to be honest".

"They are continually being reminded, not by us actually but by a whole lot of other delegates, what President Bush agreed at Gleneagles, and indeed at the Millennium summit, which was to make progress at Montreal," she said.

"There is a particular, special concern about the United States because they are such a major economic power.

"But one of the things I often try to get across to people is it is a big mistake for people to focus only on the United States as the obstacle in negotiations like this.

"There are plenty of other people around with their own particular concerns, not all of whom are as positive as one would like."

While it's good to be diplomatic about US acceptance of carbon responsibility, this certainly isn't helping; via the NYTimes:

The Bush administration, facing fresh criticism on several fronts in climate talks here, maintained its opposition on Wednesday not only to new targets for cutting emissions linked to global warming but also to any informal discussions that might even touch on the subject.

In an unusually direct rebuke, Prime Minister Paul Martin of Canada singled out the United States at a news conference for not joining international efforts to require curbs on carbon dioxide and the other greenhouse gases. "To the reticent nations, including the United States, I say this: There is such a thing as a global conscience," Mr. Martin said. "And now is the time to listen to it."
[...]
Bush administration officials attending the conference, convened to discuss updates to a set of international agreements including the Kyoto Protocol, said they had not yet seen the petition and so declined to comment. They also rebuffed critics of their stance in the talks, saying the United States was pursuing independent actions to slow growth in emissions and conducting research with other countries on new, less polluting energy technologies.

Which elicited the following comments by Stephen Byers, former UK cabinet minister and current chair of the International Climate Change Taskforce (check out their recommendations for solutions, posted at the Center for American Progress), as noted in the Guardian article:

"The latest science suggests that to avoid the worst climatic impacts, the world's carbon emissions need to start falling before the end of the next decade, instead of rising ever upwards as forecast.

"What we do in the five-year period after 2012 could therefore make or break our chances of success.

"The Bush administration's statement, that it will not be part of any new commitments on climate change, shows that there is little to be gained by seeking to engage the US at this stage in post-2012 negotiations.

"The US could rejoin the international community's response to climate change after 2008, if the momentum continues to build for mandatory action to reduce emissions.

"That is why we have proposed a date of May 2009 for the completion of negotiations on what should happen after the first phase of the Kyoto Protocol ends in 2012.

"Meanwhile, President Bush must not be allowed to block the rest of the world moving forwards in a meaningful way.

But the final blow comes from an 11th hour addition to the speaker lineup: the Big Dog (via the AP/Yahoo News):

Former President Clinton told a global audience of diplomats, environmentalists and others Friday that the Bush administration is "flat wrong" in claiming that reducing greenhouse-gas emissions to fight global warming would damage the U.S. economy.

With a "serious disciplined effort" to develop energy-saving technology, he said, "we could meet and surpass the Kyoto targets in a way that would strengthen and not weaken our economies."

Clinton, a champion of the Kyoto Protocol, the existing emissions-controls agreement opposed by the Bush administration, spoke in the final hours of a two-week U.N. climate conference at which Washington has come under heavy criticism for its stand.

Most delegations appeared ready Friday to leave an unwilling United States behind and open a new round of negotiations on future cutbacks in the emissions blamed for global warming.

"There's no longer any serious doubt that climate change is real, accelerating and caused by human activities," said Clinton, whose address was interrupted repeatedly by enthusiastic applause. "We are uncertain about how deep and the time of arrival of the consequences, but we are quite clear they will not be good."

Canadian officials said the U.S. delegation was displeased with the last-minute scheduling of the Clinton speech. But U.S. delegation chief Paula Dobriansky issued a statement saying events like Clinton's appearance "are useful opportunities to hear a wide range of views on global climate change."