Word: kyoto
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...were to draft one international politician to be your front man on climate change, Australian Prime Minister John Howard would not be high on your list. The conservative politician - and "mate of steel" to George W. Bush, according to the U.S. President - refused to enact the Kyoto Protocol and has long expressed doubt about global warming. Australia is second only to the U.S. in per-capita carbon dioxide emissions among major countries, and it's the world's biggest exporter of coal, the cheap, dirty fuel responsible for a quarter of the world's total carbon emissions...
...pushed climate change to the top of the agenda. He wants APEC - made up of 21 nations bordering the Pacific, including big carbon emitters like the U.S., China, Russia and Japan - to consider long-term "aspirational goals" on reducing carbon emissions, rather than the binding cuts called for in Kyoto. Such flexibility, he argues, would help bring major developing economies like China - which isn't required to make any cuts under Kyoto - into the conversation on climate change...
...APEC's challenge - getting countries of vastly different levels of economic development on the same page - is the same one that faces the world as it begins to plan a successor to Kyoto, which expires in 2012. For all its path-breaking importance, Kyoto was flawed because it proved unacceptable to Washington and put no clear demands on major developing countries like China, which has just passed the U.S. as the world's top emitter. If Howard's aspirational goals - which emphasize clean technology and energy efficiency over hard emissions caps - get Beijing and Washington talking at the same table...
...fact that there's a national election coming up, but Downer believes "APEC very much has the potential to launch a new approach on the issue." Last year Australia helped launch the Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate, five of whose six members belong to APEC. Rejecting Kyoto Protocol-style restrictions, the AP6 vowed a voluntary, collaborative effort to promote clean-energy technologies and efficient energy use. Australia wants APEC leaders to give the climate-change ball a strong AP6 spin ahead of December's U.N. Climate Change Conference in Bali, which will kick off the process...
...APEC is, after all, a big player: its members account for about 60% of global carbon emissions, more than all the countries that have agreed to take action under Kyoto. Many of those members are developing nations, with mushrooming emissions and, under Kyoto, no obligation to limit them. "If we could get all 21 economies to agree to make some kind of a contribution to address the issue," Downer says, "it would be a very big step forward." Alan Oxley, chairman of the Australian APEC Study Center at Monash University, agrees. "The Chinese will not accept the sort of regulation...