By BRIAN FALLOW and REUTERS
The United States and European Union faced international outrage yesterday after triggering the collapse of UN climate talks, leaving the fight against global warming in disarray.
Activists and poor nations poured scorn on the failure of the richest countries to agree on ways to reduce the buildup of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
"The failure of these talks is a disaster. No words can truly express our anger," said the Friends of the Earth group, describing the breakdown as a fiasco.
Experts said failure to cut emissions of greenhouse gases would bring more storms and floods of the kind that ravaged parts of Asia and Australia last week.
"Time is not running out. It has run out," said Tommy Remengesau, President-elect of Palau, one of the Pacific islands most vulnerable to rising sea levels.
New Zealand's representative at the talks, Energy Minister Pete Hodgson, was more optimistic, saying he hoped a deal could be struck when the talks resume in the middle of next year.
"It's very disappointing that we got so close, but it didn't get clinched. The dummy got spat," he said.
The UN meeting was called to agree on ways of carrying out commitments made in Kyoto, Japan, three years ago.
After two weeks of talks, The Hague meeting foundered mainly on the definition of "carbon sinks" - activities such as forestry which absorb carbon dioxide, offsetting emissions of greenhouse gases.
The US wanted a wide definition, including some agricultural activities, and the right to buy emission credits from countries with ample carbon sinks.
"Their point of view was: 'We won't ratify without this, so why not give it to us?'," Mr Hodgson said.
The American position was supported by Japan, Canada, Australia and Russia, but opposed by New Zealand on the grounds that it would undermine the environmental integrity of the system. The Europeans, with similar concerns, wanted to restrict the ability of countries to avoid reducing their emissions by buying the unused emission rights or carbon credits of other countries.
New Zealand opposes restrictions on trading on grounds that it merely increases the economic cost of meeting Kyoto obligations.
As the meeting neared its end there was a lot of movement, Mr Hodgson said. "I was in the midst of it. In one meeting, just 12 ministers in a Portacabin, we got a deal."
But the seven EU ministers involved were not able to get all of their colleagues to sign up, and the deal fell over.
The delegates have agreed to meet again in May or June, but agreement may be harder to reach if the United States has a Bush administration.
The Sierra Club campaigning group said the US bore the greatest responsibility for solving the global warming problem. "The US emits almost a quarter of global warming pollution despite having only 4 per cent of the world's population. While other countries are not blameless, the US deserves special recognition as the world's only superpower and biggest polluter."
New Zealand wants to ratify the Kyoto Protocol in the middle of 2002, Mr Hodgson said.
Under the protocol, New Zealand would have to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels on average for four years beginning in 2008.
Outrage over collapse of climate talks
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