PARIS — The United States, the world's largest emitter of greenhouse gases, wants to rejoin the global warming debate but is adamant that its lone approach to environmental issues is a success.
Mike Leavitt, the new head of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) of the Bush administration, is meeting this week with environment ministers at an Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) forum in Paris. "(I will) make clear that the United States continues to have an interest in success of the OECD and that we want to be full participants in matters relating to the environment," said Leavitt on Monday, ahead of the OECD meeting.
Relations between the United States and most other industrialized countries on environmental issues have deteriorated since President Bush's administration withdrew in 2001 from the Kyoto treaty limiting emissions of greenhouse gases thought to cause global warming. Bush said the treaty was too expensive and unfairly excluded developing nations.
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He reiterated President Bush's goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions as a share of the economy by 18 percent by 2012 from 2002 levels. This means in practice that if the economy would grow by more than 18 percent over those 10 years there would be an actual increase in emissions. The Kyoto commitment by the United States, which leads the world in greenhouse-gas emissions, would have been to reduce its emissions by 7 percent from 1990 levels by 2012. Emissions have steadily increased over the last decade."
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http://www.enn.com/news/2004-04-21/s_23014.asp