Japan's environment minister said yesterday he wasn't entirely happy with US President George W. Bush's plan to combat global warming, although Australia backed the plan, renewing doubts that Canberra would ratify the Kyoto treaty rejected by Washington.
The EU tentatively welcomed the plan but said the Kyoto treaty was still the best response to global warming.
Bush presented a voluntary plan on Thursday to slow the growth of heat-trapping gases blamed for global warming in contrast to the mandatory limits sought in the 1997 Kyoto treaty that Washington has shunned, saying it would harm the economy.
"It's obvious that this plan won't achieve the 7 percent reduction target, which the United States had agreed to in Kyoto," Japanese Environment Minister Hiroshi Oki said.
Under the 1997 Kyoto deal, industrialized nations agreed to cut carbon dioxide emissions by an average 5.2 percent from 1990 levels by 2012. Greenhouse gases, which come mainly from burning fossil fuels, are thought to cause rising global temperatures.
The Kyoto treaty set a target for the US, which emits around a quarter of the world's man-made "greenhouse gasses," to reduce emissions by about 7 percent below 1990 levels within a decade.
Bush's plan, most elements of which must be approved by Congress, would set goals for gas reduction tied to US economic growth and give firms incentives to meet them.
"I don't think it violates the treaty ... But it can't be denied that it takes a somewhat different approach," Oki said. He repeated Japan's position that it would do everything to ratify the Kyoto treaty, even without US participation.
Australia, however, a reluctant signatory to the Kyoto treaty that has not yet decided whether to ratify it, welcomed Bush's alternative plan.
Environmentalists lashed out at Bush's voluntary plan, saying it would do nothing to curb US greenhouse gases. Greenpeace said it looked like the policies would still allow US emissions to rise 29 percent above 1990 levels by the end of the decade.
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