US makes it clear: no law yet,so can’t commit in Copenhagen

Chu said Washington wanted to complete the “political process” before declaring its targets for reducing its greenhouse gases.

“It (the US targets) has to go through the political process. We want to make sure that a situation like Kyoto does not happen again,” he said,while speaking at IIT Delhi.

The Copenhagen summit is supposed to finalise a global climate framework beyond 2012 when the first commitment period for the Kyoto Protocol comes to an end. The developed countries are expected to declare their emission cut targets for a period beyond 2012.

The US Senate is currently debating what is known as the Kerry-Boxer legislation that proposes 20 per cent reductions by the United States by 2020 compared to 2005 levels and 83 per cent by 2050. It also has an intermediate target of 42 per cent cuts by the year 2030.

The Democrat-sponsored bill faces stiff resistance from the Republicans who boycotted the most recent hearing last week.

The House of Representatives has cleared a slightly amended version of the climate bill that calls for 17 per cent cuts by 2020 compared to 2005 levels. Because of deep divisions in the Senate,the legislation is unlikely to be passed in time for the US to declare its commitments at Copenhagen.

Chu,however,said he was happy to note that the resistance to urgent and ambitious action on the climate front was slowly melting away in the United States and indeed in the rest of the world as well. “The good news is that the resistance is shifting rapidly. We are making progress on that count. I hope the progress was faster though,” he said.

Chu acknowledged that the developing countries should not be pressed into taking any binding targets on reducing emissions. “If pushed,the developing countries might just say that this is not our problem,this is your problem. We have to see how to help each other out on this,” he said.