Obama pledges leading role in greenhouse cuts

Canberra Times
Tuesday 7/4/2009 Page: 8

President Barack Obama says the United States is ready to take the lead in tackling climate change, as European Union leaders push him to follow their ambitious targets to combat global warming. "To protect our planet, now is the time to change the way that we use energy," Mr Obama told a crowd gathered at Prague Castle yesterday.

"Together we must confront climate change by ending the world's dependency on fossil fuels by tapping the power from the sources of energy like the wind and the sun and calling upon all nations to do their part. And I pledge to you that in this global effort the US is now ready to lead."

Mr Obama's promise broke with his predecessor George W. Bush's stance, which had long frustrated European leaders. He was speaking before his first EU-US summit. The Europeans' frustration has been compounded by the fact that the US is the world's biggest polluter, leaving the impression in Europe that EU countries are doing all the heavy lifting in the fight against climate change.

But speaking after their talks, EU Commission chief Jose Manuel Barroso said he detected a genuine change under Mr Obama. The new Administration was ''much clearer and more ambitious" on climate change, he said. Mr Obama said climate change was only one of the major challenges on which he aimed to cooperate, along with the economic crisis and global conflicts.

"None of these challenges can be solved quickly or easily," he said, "but all of them demand that we listen to one another and work together ... "That is the work that we must carry on. That is the work that I have come to Europe to begin."

Europe has in particular been looking for new US leadership on fighting climate change before an international meeting in Copenhagen in December to devise a new pact for curbing greenhouse gases beyond 2012. EU nations have agreed to cut their greenhouse gas emissions by 20% from 1990 levels by 2020, rising to 30% if the rest of the developed world - mainly the US and Japan - agrees to do so.

The US House of Representatives recently received a draft Bill to cut emissions by 20% from their 2005 levels by 2020 and boost reliance on renewable energy. German environment minister Sigmar Gabriel said those cuts were not enough. Mr Obama arrived in Turkey yesterday for the last stop in his European tour.