"Eight" is boiling

Climate conflict between Bush and Merkel threatens summit failure

A year ago, numerous critics of Russia predicted that the G8 summit in St. Petersburg would end in failure. This didn't happen. This year, when the chairmanship of the club passed to Germany, Chancellor Angela Merkel, on the contrary, was given large advances. And, it seems, again in vain: the shadow of impending failure has rapidly hung over the summit in Heiligendamm in recent days.

According to Vremya Novostey, at the moment the draft main documents of the summit, which the leaders of eight countries must sign in a week, have not been agreed upon. Moreover, an emergency meeting of “sherpas” (special representatives of the heads of state for interaction within the G8) has been scheduled for next Monday - it seems that at least until then the differences will not be resolved. And most likely, they will not be resolved until the summit itself.

The climate split the G8. As the Vremya Novostey newspaper has already reported, Germany's proposals regarding the fight against global warming and the prospect of the Kyoto Protocol were categorically not satisfactory to Washington. And when the Americans realized that their opinion was simply being ignored, they sent extremely harsh comments to Berlin, almost beyond the bounds of diplomacy. Their contents were leaked to the press, after which Angela Merkel could only admit that there were problems in the negotiations. In her video message, she stressed that global warming can only be stopped if industrialized countries “lead the way” - then it will be possible to convince developing countries such as India and China that climate change is “one of the biggest challenges for humanity."

In the G8 itself, the balance of interests is “significantly more contradictory” than in the EU, Mrs. Merkel said in the Bundestag at the end of last week. Club countries need to develop a "common understanding" of how climate change can be stopped , she said. And she added, addressing the deputies: “I tell you quite frankly: I don’t know whether this will be achieved in Heiligendamm.”

The policy of the head of the federal government is criticized by many, seeing in this, as one of the Greenpeace leaders Tobias Münchmeier put it, “the surrender of important positions.” Chancellor Merkel, he believes, is leading the matter towards a "vague compromise" - it would be better if the G8 countries spelled out their differences openly.

As is known, the largest “producers” of carbon dioxide have not joined the Kyoto Protocol, which sets mathematically precise targets for reducing emissions. Neither the United States (according to the International Energy Agency for 2004, the volume of emissions amounted to almost 5.7 billion tons of carbon dioxide) nor China (second place - almost 4.77 billion tons) did this. Without them, it makes no sense to talk about the effective impact of the protocol on the environment. The European Union, which consisted of 25 states in 2004, “produced” 3.89 billion tons of carbon dioxide. The economic mechanism included in the protocol, which should encourage countries to reduce emissions, is the ability to trade national quotas. The US Republican administration was never satisfied with such a “compulsory” mechanism. Washington's firm position on this issue is usually interpreted as inattention to environmental problems . And, as experts expected, before the transfer of power to the Democrats, the American position would hardly have changed.

However, George Bush was ready to carry out a coup. As Vremya Novostei learned, for the current G8 summit, Washington has made its own proposals for climate protection, which sound much more ambitious than the measures proposed by Germany.

Berlin proposes that negotiations on a “post-Kyoto” agreement (the Kyoto Protocol ends in 2012) begin in December of this year at an international conference in Indonesia and end by the end of 2009 - so that the new mechanism can begin to work immediately after the completion of the current one . As for developing countries, Berlin “hopes” to involve them in these negotiations.

The Bush administration's initiative boils down to the following: developed countries need to, together with developing countries (read: China), negotiate the development and application of cost-effective technologies to reduce the greenhouse effect, and do this by the end of 2008.

The US does not set specific targets for reducing emissions (the German proposal is to cut them by half by 2050 compared to 1990), insisting on the introduction of technology and market incentives. And although there is an obvious economic calculation in these proposals (to knock the “environmental” card out of the hands of the Democrats on the eve of the presidential elections), they are clearly more ambitious than the German initiatives, both in terms of timing and scope.

“This is huge progress. If earlier the Americans simply did not want to talk within the G8 on the topic of climate, now I see simply a fundamental change in position,” a source in one of the G8 countries told Vremya Novostey.

At the same time, German negotiators are informally reporting difficulties in finding joint language for a final communiqué. In the section on climate, entire paragraphs are “out of brackets,” that is, not agreed upon by the partners. The newspaper's Berlin interlocutor believes that the paragraph on climate protection will remain unagreed until the meeting in Heiligendamm, and directly during the summit the leaders will have to work out a political compromise themselves. “I think Bush will be very well prepared for such a discussion,” said one of the newspaper’s sources.

Climate disagreements are the most acute, but not the only ones. The overall slogan of the summit “Economic Growth and Responsibility” refers to two discussions and, accordingly, two documents: “Growth and Responsibility in the Global Economy” (one of the sections of which is climate protection) and “Growth and Responsibility in Africa” . As is known, with the decision of the 2005 summit in the Scottish town of Gleneagles, the G8 began the process of large-scale debt relief for African countries. This time, the United States and Great Britain invited their partners to take on new obligations to finance various programs on the “dark” continent. But, according to Vremya Novostey, the rest of the G8 members are categorically not ready for this.

For Russia, the conflict within the G8 is not of critical importance. On the issue of climate protection, Moscow is most likely ready to move within the framework of the “Kyoto process”, and may also support the efforts of the Americans. Otherwise, it would be important for the G8 to confirm its commitment to the energy principles announced at the St. Petersburg summit and its readiness to implement its decisions. According to the newspaper, the paragraph on this is one of the few already agreed upon by the club members.

Yuri ShPAKOV, Berlin, Andrey DENISOV