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Merkel Supports Bush Plan For Climate Summit
Meeting Would Seek
Binding Targets
On Pollution Limits
By John D. McKinnon and Marcus Walker
June 12, 2008 12:01 am ET
MESEBERG, Germany -- President Bush's hopes for reaching a climate-change agreement among the world's biggest economies got a boost from German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Europe's leading global advocate for tough new greenhouse-gas limits.
At a news conference with Mr. Bush, Chancellor Merkel suggested that a U.S.-led meeting of leaders from the world's 16 or so biggest economies could bear fruit: a joint commitment to adopt binding national and international targets for pollution reduction. The meeting -- part of a negotiation launched by the U.S. last year -- is being planned in conjunction with a smaller gathering of the so-called Group of Eight leading nations next month in Hokkaido, Japan.
"I'm looking forward to the G-8 summit in Japan," Chancellor Merkel said at the news conference with Mr. Bush. "I hope that we can make further progress on climate protection...[including] some kind of binding targets."
Chancellor Merkel suggested that a climate-change agreement -- which would, in turn, become part of a broader United Nations accord -- could even help alleviate recent world-wide jumps in energy and food prices by making global energy demand and consumption more predictable.
In recent days, White House officials have been talking up the possibility of some agreement on climate at the coming major-economies meeting. "The objective is to be able to announce a long-term binding goal at the G-8," Mr. Bush said Wednesday. But the talk Wednesday came a week after a measure that would have imposed caps on greenhouse-gas emissions failed in the Senate -- a measure the White House threatened to veto. The G-8 effort is likely to face the same hurdle: politicians' reluctance to embrace changes that would lead to higher energy prices.