Crunch for climate battle

Making the world clean up is a big task, writes CATHERINE FIELD.

PARIS - Action by the European Union over the coming week may determine whether the Kyoto Protocol, the sole international defence against global warming, will succeed or unravel after three years of painful negotiations.

An 11-day final round of talks is under way in The Hague to decide how to put flesh on the skeletal United Nations deal, the most ambitious environmental accord yet attempted.

But European diplomats and environmentalists are grim, sensing that the outcome of the American election means the prospects for United States ratification of Kyoto have virtually evaporated.

Vice-President Al Gore is a keen supporter of the protocol. But even if he wins the presidency, he will have to win over the Senate, which ratifies foreign treaties. And that house returned on November 7 a Republican majority already deeply hostile towards Kyoto.

If the George W. Bush wins the White House, there can be no hope of a presidential push for Kyoto. An oilman, Bush has already declared he opposes ratification.

Without the US, which by itself accounts for a quarter of the carbon gases blamed for global warning, does the protocol have a future?

Greenpeace campaigner Bill Hare says there is a good chance if the EU sticks to a tough line and creates a "critical mass" by mustering sufficient support among other developed countries.

Together, he believes, they could make a money-spinning success of Kyoto's key mechanism - an innovative market to trade in carbon-gas emissions.

Under this idea, clean countries that are under their emissions target could "sell" the unused part of their quota to nations that are over their limit, thus providing a financial spur to polluters to clean up their act.

Sam Fankhauser, a London-based researcher in climate change, says that without the world's single biggest polluter it would be "very hard to have a meaningful treaty."

The negotiations, he speculated, might have to start all over again, but this time with concessions to lower the political and economic cost to Washington of meeting its obligations.

Such thinking is unpalatable in the EU, the world's most environmentally conscious power - especially in a year when the worst heatwaves, storms and floods in recent memory have led to huge interest in global warming.

"We will not strike any agreement that could endanger the environmental effectiveness of the protocol or fails to translate into a genuine reduction in carbon emissions," vowed French Environment Minister Dominique Voynet.

Dutch Environment Minister Jan Pronk, whose country hosts the 11-day negotiation marathon, was equally adamant that Kyoto should be neither diluted nor delayed. Negotiations get into top gear tomorrow at ministerial level.

Scientists say global warming is shaping as the worst man-made environmental disaster. Although some data remains sketchy, a convincing picture has emerged that carbon dioxide and other gases released by fossil fuels are acting like an invisible blanket, storing up the Sun's heat in the lower atmosphere.

The most pessimistic scenarios see a rise of 6 degrees over the next century, causing polar ice caps to shrink and oceans to rise.