U.N. Makes Only Slight Progress On Global Warming Conference Delegates Still Split On How Much To Cut Greenhouse Gases

Delegates at a week-long U.N. conference on global warming that ended Friday made slight progress toward establishing targets for reducing emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.

However, the delegates remained far apart on just how much to cut emissions.

Conference chief Raul Estrada-Oyuela, of Argentina, said the conference achieved its goal of streamlining proposals into a more manageable text in advance of a Climate Conference in Kyoto, Japan, in December.

The delegates are to meet again in Bonn in July and October to hammer out a final text.

The 150 nations attending the Kyoto summit will try to set targets for reducing emissions of greenhouse gases after 2000; many scientists say the gases cause global warming and could create an environmental disaster.

Estrada-Oyuela also said that delegates agreed this week that any reductions adopted at Kyoto would have to be binding.

Still, Bill Hare, a spokesman for Greenpeace, said the Bonn talks were a “wasted opportunity” because substantive differences had not been overcome.

“This has simply been a clerical exercise by 150 ambassadors,” he said.

Small island states want a 20 percent cut in emissions by the year 2005. The United States says that would be too costly.

Developing countries say they shouldn’t be required to cut emissions right now because the global warming threat was caused by the heavy industry of wealthy countries like the United States.

The 15-member European Union agreed on Monday in Brussels to cut greenhouse gases 15 percent by 2010, which is also the EU’s proposal in the negotiating text adopted in Bonn.

A decision on whether EU member states should achieve most of those reductions by 2005 was deferred until June.

Now that EU countries have decided among themselves on reductions, environmentalists say, that puts pressure on the United States, the world’s largest producer of greenhouse gases.

During the Bonn conference, the U.S. delegation proposed that developed countries be allowed to reduce their greenhouse gases over a five-year period.

But the U.S. delegation has not yet said how big those cuts should be or when they should be made; experts in Washington are still working out the ramifications of various plans.