Global lawmakers demand global action on warming

Written by: Mallory Melander on Feb 20, 2007 9:00 AM EST

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Lawmakers from across the world including the United States and China called for a post-Kyoto pact to fight the catastrophic threat of global warming.

Meeting in Washington for the first time, the Global Legislators Organisation for a Balanced Environment (GLOBE) cited a new mood for action, with scientific warnings on climate change reaching a fever pitch.

"The key thing is that we as global legislators are no longer in denial," British former cabinet member Stephen Byers told AFP.

In a statement, lawmakers drawn primarily from the powerful Group of Eight nations plus Brazil, China, India, Mexico and South Africa said the evidence of man-made climate change "is now beyond doubt."

"But we must be clear that climate change is a global issue and there is an obligation on us all to take action, in line with our capabilities and historic responsibilities," they said at a two-day forum held at the US Senate.

Together, the forum nations pump out two-thirds of the greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide that scientists say are heating up the Earth's atmosphere, with potentially devastating effects.

Fossil fuel pollution will raise temperatures this century, worsen floods, droughts and hurricanes, melt polar ice and damage the climate system for a thousand years to come, the UN's top panel on climate change said this month.

The Washington forum was part of an ongoing informal attempt by legislators to craft the outlines of a global-warming pact to succeed the Kyoto treaty, which expires in 2012.

The Republican administration of US President George W. Bush refused to adopt Kyoto, arguing the economic costs would be crippling and the science remained unclear.

The treaty also left out emerging nations like India and China, which is building a new coal-fired power plant at the rate of one a week to sustain its stunning economic transformation.

Paula Dobriansky, US under secretary for state for global affairs, said the Bush administration was "strongly committed" to cutting industrial emissions, provided the approach is voluntary.

But a number of influential US senators, including Republican presidential hopeful John McCain and Democrat John Kerry, lined up to insist that legally enforced change is coming to the world's heaviest polluter.

"This is a moment of enormous crisis. We have a 10-year window," Kerry told the forum, pressing for global action now before the planet's climate lurches over a "tipping point."

Bush himself has been sounding less skeptical about global warming as it acquires a new urgency in public thinking.

Former vice president Al Gore, an Oscar nominee for his climate-change documentary "An Inconvenient Truth," announced Thursday a concert on July 7 featuring acts such as the Red Hot Chili Peppers to promote action on the issue.

The Washington forum appealed to the G8 nations -- Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia and the United States -- to use their June summit to lead the world into a post-Kyoto environment.

The legislators recommended a global market to cap and trade industrial carbon emissions, along the lines of a scheme pioneered by the European Union and now being used experimentally by California and northeast US states.

However, legislators from developing nations stressed the onus remains on rich nations to clean up a problem they created, without crippling economic development for billions of poorer people.

Tejaswini Seeramesh, an Indian federal lawmaker from the southern city of Bangalore, said that "if we have to change our way of life, everyone else will have to make sacrifices too."

A key demand was for technology transfers from Western companies, to enable countries like China and India to clean up their coal-fired power plants.

The forum also called for more development aid to safeguard countries already menaced by global warming, such as flood-prone Bangladesh.

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