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  PlanetArk 13 Jan 06
World's Big Polluters Fund Cleaner Fossil Fuels
Story by James Grubel

SYDNEY - Six of the world's major polluters wrapped up climate talks on Thursday with a multi-million-dollar pledge to develop clean energy, but said polluting fossil-fuels would continue to underpin their economies for generations.

Green groups, which labelled the six-nation climate-change talks a sham, said the money was a token and the two-day meeting had failed to make serious commitments to fight global warming.

In a communique at the end of the talks, the six nations did not set any targets to cut greenhouse gases. Instead, they stressed the need for business to help find ways of cutting greenhouse emissions without hurting fossil fuels or impacting on the growing demand for energy, particularly in China and India.

"What this is, is ... a harnessing of the private sector. It is recognising the fact that it is the private sector that makes the investment decisions, in all of the countries," US Energy Secretary Sam Bodman told reporters.

The Sydney meeting grouped the United States, China, Japan, India, South Korea and Australia, which together account for nearly half the globe's greenhouse gases emitted by mankind. It was the inaugural meeting of the Asia Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate, which the six set up as an alternative way to tackle global warming outside the Kyoto Protocol by focusing on clean-energy technology.

A goal of the partnership is to convince industry to take the lead in developing and installing cleaner energy that cuts carbon dioxide and other by-products of burning fossil fuels that are warming the atmosphere, threatening weather chaos. Some of the world's big mining and energy firms attended the talks and pledged to improve efficiency.

The communique said reductions in greenhouse gases must be achieved without hindering economic growth. "We recognise that fossil fuels underpin our economies, and will be an enduring reality for our lifetimes and beyond," the document said.

"AGREED TO DO NOTHING"

Green groups condemned the Sydney climate talks as nothing more than a "coal pact" between the world's big polluters and fossil-fuel firms, such as Exxon Mobil and Rio Tinto, and a missed an opportunity to commit to renewable energy sources.

"Basically, they haven't agreed to do anything in terms of serious commitment," said Monash University climate change expert Professor Amanda Lynch.

The partnership agreed to set up eight industry-based taskforces to develop new clean energy schemes that would be backed by the technology fund. The taskforces will submit plans by mid-2006. Australia kick-started the technology fund with A$100 million ($75 million) over five years and Bodman said he would request US$52 million in the 2007 budget.

While the partnership has said it will complement - not compete - with the Kyoto Protocol, green groups said the Sydney talks were aimed at subverting Kyoto, which obliges about 40 developed countries to cut their emissions by 5.2 percent below 1990 levels during 2008-2012.

The United States and Australia refuse to sign Kyoto - whose members account for 35 percent of the world's greenhouse gas emissions - claiming its mandatory greenhouse gas cuts would threaten economic growth.

"Experience has taught us that seeking arbitrary targets doesn't result in achieving practical solutions to global climate change," said Australian Prime Minister John Howard.

Environmentalists said the Sydney pact would fail because it did not impose targets on its members, which comprise nearly half of humanity, or offer incentives for industry to clean up their emissions.

"The first meeting of the Asia-Pacific climate pact has simply confirmed that the world's largest greenhouse emitters intend to dig in on coal, oil and gas despite the damage they are doing to the global environment," said Australian Greens Senator Christine Milne.

But Howard said an economic and energy outlook by the Australian Bureau of Agriculture and Resource Economics showed clean development technology could cut greenhouse gas emissions from the six nations by around 23 percent by 2050.

The UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said in 1990 that stabilising carbon dioxide concentrations needed eventual emission reductions of 60-80 percent.

Many scientists say global warming is melting glaciers, raising sea levels and will cause more intense storms, droughts and floods. Current levels of carbon dioxide and methane in the atmosphere are higher now than at any time in the past 650,000 years, research from Antarctic ice cores shows.
(Additional reporting by Jim Regan) (US$1=A$1.33)
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