WASHINGTON — Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Monday that any agreement to combat global warming should require developing countries such as India and China to reduce emissions, a position that prevented former President George W. Bush from signing an international pact.
At a forum on energy and climate change, Clinton told representatives of 16 major economies representing the world’s biggest emitters of greenhouse gases that the U.S. will work tirelessly to forge a new international agreement but that it could not do it alone.
“There is no sense in negotiating an agreement if it will have no practical impact in reducing emissions to safer levels,” Clinton told the participants at the start of the two-day meeting. “So we all have to do our part, and we need to be creative and think hard about what will work in order for us to achieve the outcomes we hope for.”
The Major Economies Forum on Energy and Climate was announced in March by President Barack Obama and includes the countries responsible for 75 percent of the global emissions of heat-trapping gases. Its goal is to lay the groundwork for an international agreement to curb climate-changing pollution by December.
That’s when delegates from 175 countries will meet in Copenhagen, Denmark, to write a new treaty to replace the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012. The Kyoto Protocol required 37 countries to cut emissions by a total of 5 percent by 2012.
During Bush’s tenure, the United States refused to take part in the Kyoto regime, calling it unfair since it made no demands on such rapidly developing economies as China and India.
Since then, China has surpassed the United States as the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases. But 15 to 25 percent of its emissions are generated by manufacturing goods for export, and China’s leaders have said they want importers such as the U.S. to be responsible for their share.
