Climate talks secure U.S. support

Carbon dioxide emissions pose a great threat to the environment

TRIESTE, Italy -- The United States has given the international community a committment to improve the environment and help battle the effects of global warming.

The new U.S. environment supremo told her G8 partners that Washington is serious about cleaning up the planet.

Christine Todd Whitman attended the weekend's summit in Trieste aware that there are doubts over President George W. Bush's position on green issues -- particularly on global warming.

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European Union countries wanted to know whether Bush would return to negotiations on sealing the 1997 Kyoto pact on reducing pollution blamed for climate change, an agreement he had called "unfair to America" during his election campaign.

Whitman said: "The president has said global climate change is the greatest environmental challenge that we face and that we must recognise that and take steps to move forward."

The president would oversee bi-partisan legislation to limit carbon dioxide -- the main "greenhouse gas" blamed by many scientists for trapping heat in the earth's atmosphere -- from U.S. power plants for the first time, she said.

Some EU countries had clashed with the U.S. at the last effort to get the global warming strategy off the ground, in The Hague, last November.

"Ms Whitman was very positive about climate change being a global issue, about the scientific evidence and that the Kyoto framework was something they should work within," a senior British official said.

Green groups also felt buoyed by the Whitman effect.

"Whitman led a move forward. She could have come to play a spoiler role, but she came to build relationships and bring the message that George Bush thinks that climate change is a serious problem," World Wildlife Fund's climate campaigner Jennifer Morgan said.

Environmentalists have accused Bush of having a poor track record in environmental policy while he was Texas governor.

A U.N. scientific panel has said the average global temperature is likely to rise by between 1.4 and 5.8 degrees Celsius (2.5-10.4 Fahrenheit) over the next 100 years. Sea levels could rise by as much as 88 cm (35 inches).

Such a change in temperature -- which many scientists believe is being caused by pollution trapping heat in the atmosphere -- would mean widespread droughts and floods and massive economic and natural damage, experts say.

Reuters contributed to this report.

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Kyoto climate summit
Climate Change
U.S. Global Warming Site
European Union

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