If ever there's a reason to join the United States should do it now. After the events of September 11, if there is any reason for the United States to call for international, global approaches (it should also) join a global approach to the existing global problem of climate change.

Jan Pronk Dutch Environment Minister

Eight months after President Bush shocked many U.S. allies by pulling out of the Kyoto global warming treaty, the rest of the world finalized the legal work which should let them bring it into force without the planet's biggest polluter.

Bush's critics abroad saw that as evidence Washington, already planning a strategic missile shield, was turning its back on the concerns of the rest of the world.

The Kyoto pact aims to reduce gas emissions from factories and exhaust pipes that many scientists say are gathering in the atmosphere trapping heat -- the so-called greenhouse effect.

U.N. scientists predict the result could be an increase in average temperatures by up to six degrees Celsius over the next 100 years, leading to rising sea levels, and an increase in major floods and droughts.

The events of September 11 led Bush to call on his allies for a global coalition to fight terrorism. At the end of the two-week climate talks in Marrakesh, many were calling for Bush to now rejoin what the global fight against climate change.

REASON TO REJOIN KYOTO

``If ever there's a reason to join the United States should do it now,'' said Dutch Environment Minister Jan Pronk, who chaired the ill-fated Hague talks on climate change two years ago when the United States was still a Kyoto participant.

``After the events of September 11, if there is any reason for the United States to call for international, global approaches (it should also) join a global approach to the existing global problem of climate change,'' he told reporters.

``That would add to the credibility of any other approach which is being sought by the United States seeking a global answer.''

The Marrakesh agreement sealed the legal text to govern how the treaty works and, crucially, is meant to give enough legal certainty for waverers like Russia and Japan to ratify it.

It commits the world's industrialized countries to cut their greenhouse gas emissions, particularly carbon dioxide, by an average of five percent of 1990 levels by 2012.

As Russia and Japan indicated that the Marrakesh deal should make their ratification possible, Kyoto could come into force without the United States by late 2002.

Canada said the fact that the world had agreed a workable Kyoto rulebook showed its neighbor was wrong to opt out.

``Canada thinks the American position on Kyoto is wrong. The basic difference between us is we believe we can succeed in achieving climate change goals within the Kyoto process, the Americans believe you can't,'' Canadian Environment Minister David Anderson said.

``What we've done (by agreeing acceptable rules) is we have shown our original belief that the Americans are wrong is, in fact, accurate,'' he said.

NEW NORTH AMERICAN APPROACH

He added that he expected the U.S. to unveil a North American approach to cutting greenhouse gases which Canada would probably participate in alongside Kyoto.

``We'll be almost certainly the only country in the world in that position. So we are very concerned to make sure that the American system is compatible with Kyoto.''

The United States insists it will not return to Kyoto.

U.S. Under-Secretary of State for Global Affairs Paula Dobriansky said her country was looking for a global solution to climate change, one that would be a ``tapestry'' of national and regional measures, rather than the single worldwide system provided by Kyoto.

``Our overall goal is the same (as that of the rest of the world),'' Dobriansky told reporters earlier in the week. ``We have a common objective which is to address climate change and to seek reductions of greenhouse gases.''

Environmental campaigners said the United States would now be forced to make good on that promise, inside or outside Kyoto.

``The agreement, and the fact that countries will move to bring the protocol into force, will send strong support to those in the United States who want to push for action on climate change,'' Kate Hampton of Friends of the Earth told reporters.

Jennifer Morgan of the World Wildlife Fund said that as the United States had a great input during the years since Kyoto in helping draft the rules agreed in Marrakesh, some believe a return should not be too painful.

Many U.S. companies would be pressing for the right to participate in any future emissions trading market that is likely to develop under the Kyoto rules, she said.

``This agreement includes many of the elements the U.S. has been asking for over the years. It is an agreement that the Bush administration should embrace and come in to.'' Morgan said.

Copyright © 2001 Reuters Limited

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