Ministers heat up war against greenhouse gases

The government will today announce ways in which everyone can reduce the risks of the worst effects of climate change, as Ministers prepare to take part in top-level international talks on global warming.

The government will today announce ways in which everyone can reduce the risks of the worst effects of climate change, as Ministers prepare to take part in top-level international talks on global warming.

The UK Climate Change Programme being launched by Environment Minister Michael Meacher sets out how the country can deliver the UK's target under the Kyoto deal of cutting greenhouse gases by 12.5 per cent below 1990 levels by 2008-12.

It aims to move beyond that, towards the Government's even tougher domestic goal of reducing carbon dioxide emissions by a massive 20 per cent.

Today's document was outlining what people can do to cut polluting greenhouse gases.

Mr Meacher, who with Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott attends the landmark talks in The Hague next week along with ministers from more than 170 countries, warned earlier this year that strengthening coastal and river flood defences to withstand climate change could cost £1.2 billion over the next half-century for England and Wales.

Charles Secrett, director of Friends of the Earth, said he hoped the climate change strategy would send a powerful message to the climate negotiations at The Hague and provide a blueprint for other nations.

The European Union yesterday rejected a proposal from the United States, Japan and Canada on how to cut levels of greenhouse gasses that are raising the earth's temperature.

The 15-nation EU said in a statement that the proposal "does not ensure the environmental integrity of the Kyoto Protocol," a three-year old international agreement on reduction targets.

The rejection set the stage for a tough battle when environment ministers arrive next week at the U.N. conference on climate change. They are expected to agree to concrete measures to combat global warming.

Under the Kyoto Protocol, reached at a 1997 meeting in Japan, world leaders agreed to lower global greenhouse gas emissions by 5.2 percent from their 1990 levels before 2012.

The EU statement added that the U.S. proposal was too vague and "open ended." It said that the proposal was overly focused on short-term measures and "does not solve remaining problems for the future."

The U.S. plan, which environmental groups also harshly criticized, suggests using so-called carbon "sinks" - forests and lands that absorb carbon dioxide pollution - to help meet targets of carbon dioxide reduction agreed to in Japan.

Some 2,000 government negotiators from about 150 countries are working round the clock to settle issues such as sinks that could determine the success or failure of the conference.

The U.S. draft also envisions agriculture and woodland projects that would count as reductions in atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide without requiring curbs in emissions from factory smokestacks.

Some industrial countries have such extensive forests that they could meet their entire targets without changing the release of pollution.

"We strongly support including sink activities," U.S. delegate David Sandalow told reporters. "We believe this can be an important tool to fight global warming."

U.S. officials told The Associated Press on Wednesday that they plan to meet half their Kyoto targets with credits from sinks. Otherwise, the officials said, the United States would never have agreed to the protocol.

Under the Kyoto agreement, Europe would reduce emissions by 8 percent compared with its 1990 levels; Japan would reduce output 6 percent; and the United States would trim 7 percent off its levels.

"We are profoundly concerned and foresee that some of these measures could threaten the survival of our people," Rosemary Kuptana of Canada's Inuit population said. "Our fragile ecosystem is being compromised."

Global warming doesn't just threaten rare animal species, she said, it can also wipe out entire nations that strongly rely on natural surroundings for food and shelter.

During the second week of talks, government ministers also will face the contentious issue of emission credit trading, under which rich nations would be able to purchase emissions credits from countries that pollute less.

"We do not wish to be museums for trees in order to allow industrial countries to continue with their pollution," said Leonard Nurse, director of the Coastal Zone Management Unit on the Caribbean island of Barbados.

Smaller and poorer countries, often the most vulnerable to rising sea levels and severe storms that result from climate change, fear their worries won't be addressed during high-level talks next week.

"The Kyoto Protocol must be ratified as a first step," Kuptana said. "The dramatic changes we see in Canada's North are a signal of what's in store for other regions of the world."