MONTREAL — Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin took aim at the United States on Wednesday for its refusal to negotiate a new global warming treaty, telling a United Nations conference that the world's most powerful economy needed to resume participating in international talks to reduce greenhouse gases.
"Climate change is a global challenge that demands a global response. Yet there are nations that resist, voices that attempt to diminish the urgency or dismiss the science, or declare, either in word or indifference, that this is not our problem to solve. Well, let me tell you, it is our problem to solve," Martin said as he opened the high-level talks at the U.N. Climate Change Conference here.
Martin's remarks triggered applause from a hall filled with delegates from dozens of countries, who are here to begin talks on a new global warming treaty to take effect once the original commitments of the current pact, the Kyoto Protocol, expire in 2012.
Later, at a news conference, Martin, who is in the midst of an election campaign, singled out the United States by name, saying, "To the reticent nations, including the United States, I say this: There is such a thing as a global conscience."
The United States, the world's largest producer of greenhouse gases, and Australia are the only two large nations to reject the Kyoto Protocol, which requires developed countries to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases to roughly 5% below 1990 levels.
Most climate scientists say much steeper reductions in greenhouse gases -- emitted when fossil fuels combust in cars and power plants -- will be needed to curtail the greenhouse effect, which has already begun to increase temperatures, raise sea levels and affect weather patterns around the world.
President Bush, who has argued that the Kyoto Protocol's firm caps on greenhouse gases would damage the U.S. economy, has dispatched a negotiating team to the conference that has opposed any talks on a new pact -- a stance that has begun to draw open criticism from other nations.
Stavros Dimas, the European Union's top environmental official, criticized the Bush administration during a meeting with reporters, saying that "we will continue to talk to our American partners and remind them of their commitments."
Dimas and other European officials contend that by refusing to discuss new global warming obligations in Montreal, the U.S. is reneging on a pledge Bush made at a Group of 8 summit in Scotland this year with leaders of the world's other major economies.
