15 February 2005 - The EU faces calls to impose trade sanctions on the US for its failure to ratify the world’s first ‘Climate Change treaty’, the Kyoto Protocol, which comes into force tomorrow (16 February).

Under the terms of the Kyoto Protocol,  which has been signed by 180 countries, all EU members and other industrialized signatories have agreed to reduce their emissions of greenhouse gas CO2 by five per cent, based on 1990 levels. The EU has already introduced an emissions trading scheme to help achieve this goal.

By failing to ratify the treaty, the US administration is effectively giving its exporters a state subsidy, which is unlawful under World Trade Organisation rules – and such exporters should be subject to punitive tariffs to gain access to those markets where local producers are being forced to bear the additional cost of becoming ‘Kyoto compliant’, according to British Euro-MP Caroline Lucas. Dr Lucas has already raised the issue with EU trade commissioner Peter Mandelson.

Dr Lucas, Green MEP for South-East England and author of ‘Global Warming, Local Warning’, said the international community should force the US to shoulder the moral, legal and financial responsibility of its devastating impact on societies around the world.

“US President George W Bush presides over a ‘rogue state’, which is dominated by the oil industry lobby and reckless in its disregard of the future of ‘human civilization as we know it’,” she said.

“Climate change is already wreaking havoc: scientists queued up at a government sponsored conference in Exeter last week to warn of the global catastrophe just around the corner unless we take urgent action to address climate change now.

“To do so we need nothing short of a revolution in the way we produce and consume energy and other resources. The Kyoto Protocol is the first tentative step towards engineering just such a revolution.”

Scientists at the UN International Panel on Climate Change have warned that the five per cent reduction agreed under the Kyoto treaty won’t be nearly enough to halt climate change – and have called for a worldwide emissions reduction of 60 per cent by 2050. As most emissions are from the developed world, this translates as a 90 per cent reduction in the EU.

“Kyoto doesn’t begin to go far enough to avert disaster but it’s the only international agreement on the table,” said Dr Lucas.

“Getting the world to agree on a five per cent emissions reduction is a first step to reaching agreement on the more radical measures scientists are telling us are necessary.

“By refusing to sign up to Kyoto, the US is demonstrating – yet again – that it is a rogue state pursuing its perceived national self-interest to the exclusion of the peoples of the rest of the world.

“This is unacceptable and the world community must now look at ways of holding the US accountable for damage its isolationist policies are inflicting on the rest of the world.”

ENDS