China Comes To The Global Warming Table

There's a shadow play that's happening Down Under, as the APEC summit struggles for a consensus on climate change. See, the US won't sign anything unless all emitters are included, and China wants to have it both ways, as a developing nation and a world power, and Indonesia doesn't want to do anything because they're holding the follow-up summit to the Kyoto Treaty in their country next year. There are a lot of competing interests all interested in dodging the issue and blaming somebody else.

President George W. Bush raised climate change with Hu during a bilateral in Sydney and said he would support a strong climate statement by the 21 leaders and urged Hu to do the same.

"They concluded the importance of addressing this pressing problem cooperatively and responsibly ... and in a manner that did not stall or stunt economic growth," said Dan Price, Bush's deputy national security adviser for international economic development.

Bush indicated the U.S. would support a "strong leaders' declaration on climate change" and encouraged the Chinese leader to do likewise, as well as consider eliminating tariffs on environmental and clean energy technologies, said Price.

In a rare news conference after meeting Australian Prime Minister John Howard, Hu said he preferred the U.N. framework for handling climate change proposals.

"We very much hope that this Sydney Declaration will give full expression to the position that the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change would remain the main channel for international efforts to tackle climate change," Hu said.

The declaration should also reflect U.N. principles of "common but differentiated responsibilities" towards lowering harmful greenhouse gas emissions, he added.

Malaysia Trade Minister Rafidah Aziz said APEC should not be dealing with emission targets at all. "It should be the U.N. and the appropriate forums," she told Malaysian journalists.

Meanwhile, the GAO is angered by this go-slow approach because it's the exact opposite of what's needed.

The federal government needs to do a better job addressing how climate change is transforming the hundreds of millions of acres under its watch, according to a Government Accountability Office report to be released today.

Looking at agencies ranging from the U.S. Forest Service to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, GAO officials gathered reports of dramatic changes across the nearly 30 percent of U.S. land that lies under federal control. Since 1850, the glaciers in Glacier National Park have declined from 150 to 26; climate-triggered coral bleaching in the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary is eroding the area's tourist appeal.

For the most part, the men and women overseeing these 600 million acres of land and 150,000 square miles of protected waters have little direction on how to respond to these shifts, according to the report. It states that these managers "have limited guidance about whether or how to address climate change and therefore, are uncertain about what action, if any, they should take. . . . Without such guidance, their ability to address climate change and effectively manage resources is constrained."

We can't take care of our own national monuments and we dare try to tell the world how to handle it. Whatever happened to setting an example by deed?