“If we ignore climate change, the debate about energy security could soon be irrelevant,” said the U.S. Ambassador in Greece Mr Charles Ries speaking at a business luncheon organized by the Institute of Energy for South-East Europe on Wednesday.
Mr Ries defended Washington’s decision not to adopt the Kyoto Protocol saying that “Europe and the United States share the common goals of reducing greenhouse gas emissions, introducing cleaner technologies and cleaner fuels, and reducing the impact if human activities on the global climate system. All of us-together-are in a struggle to maintain the health of our planet. But the United States and Europe have decided to work towards this goal differently.”
The Ambassador presented US policy on global warming saying that “instead of adopting the Kyoto ceilings, the U.S. pursued a different strategy to combat global warming. We have emphasized support for including on carbon sequestration, R&D, tax incentives for energy saving and renewable production investment, vehicle efficiency mandates, and international research partnerships. President Bush devoted a large portion of his State if the Union address this year to the subject of climate change and what the U.S. intends to do about it. We are breaking our patterns of energy use and we are addressing the issue of climate change. The new U.S. plan builds on previous initiatives to combat climate change, including the goal in 2002 to reduce the greenhouse gas intensity of the U.S. economy by 18% by 2012. We are well on the track to achieve this goal,” he said.
Mr Ries also said that during 2000-2004 –US greenhouse gas emission increase 1.3% - a very modest increase- considering that the economy growth rate stood at 19% and population rose by 11.3 million people over that period.
Summing up, Mr Ries said that the United States is committed to the objective of cutting greenhouse gas emissions; it has a set of policies and actions that are producing concrete results; and it is working multilaterally to cut global emissions, particularly in the developing world.