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June 8, 2007
SouthAmerica: Europeans and the rest of the world will have to wait until January of 2009 - when the newly elected president Al Gore assumes the presidency in the United States â for them to get a more realistic and meaningful agreement regarding global warming.
Until then just play along with the incompetent crew of the Bush administration that are doing wherever regarding anything.
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âG8 leaders agree to climate compromiseâ
By James Gerstenzang, Times Staff Writer
Los Angeles Times - June 7, 2007
HEILIGENDAMM, Germany -- Leaders of the largest industrial nations agreed here Thursday to a compromise on efforts to combat global warming which had been sought by President Bush.
Participants in the Group of Eight summit, led by German Chancellor Angela Merkel, yielded to Bush's insistence that while new talks were necessary to deal with climate change, the summit must not order specific steps and targets to reduce the greenhouse gases widely blamed for rising temperatures. Bush has sought goals rather than mandatory steps.
Merkel entered the summit calling for a plan endorsed by most European leaders, under which participating nations would reduce their emissions by 2050 to half of what they were in 1990.
Instead, she came away with a goal, a nonmandated course favored by Bush, of such an emissions reduction, and a decision to "invite" the "the major economies," a category that includes China, India and Brazil, to join them.
"I can live very well with the compromise," Merkel told German television interviewers.
While the chancellor and British Prime Minister Tony Blair presented the global warming agreement as a strong step forward, many environmentalists were not pleased.
Reinhard Buetikofer, head of Germany's opposition Green party, said the summit statement was "juggling with words," and added: "To 'consider seriously' halving the emissions by 2050 is a triumph of vagueness and noncommitment."
At the same time, Fred Krupp, who heads the U.S. organization Environmental Defense, praised Bush's acceptance of the summit plan. He said Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., chair of the Senate Environment Committee, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., must promptly take advantage of widespread U.S. business support for a cap-and-trade program, under which polluters that have difficulty reducing emissions to capped levels can buy credits from others who reduce emissions below the limit.
Such a system is in use in Europe under the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012. The new plan proposed here would replace that U.N.-sponsored agreement.
Global warming was one of the central topics of the two-and-a-half days of formal and social meetings at the summit, whose participants are the United States, Russia, Germany, Britain, Canada, France, Italy and Japan.
For the second consecutive day, demonstrators opposed to economic globalization and in favor of tougher steps to counter global warming wreaked havoc with access routes to this village on the northeastern coast, but failed to disrupt the session.
Greenpeace sent speed boats into the coastal security zone, 13 miles wide and 9 miles out to sea, bringing police boats into pursuit. Two Greenpeace activists and one police officer were injured when an inflatable police boat ran over a Greenpeace boat, the police said.
Twenty-one people were arrested, and the police said they seized eight boats. Greenpeace said 11 boats were taken.
On land, some 5,000 demonstrators tried to reach a checkpoint near Heiligendamm, but were pushed back by mounted police.
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