The Bush administration yesterday turned aside pleas from European Union officials to reconsider its decision to abandon a global warming agreement and said it would move ahead to develop alternative proposals far less costly to the U.S. economy. The EU delegation met for more than an hour with Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Christine Todd Whitman and White House and State Department officials, who repeated President Bush's complaints that the global warming treaty negotiated in Kyoto, Japan, in 1997 would adversely affect the U.S. economy while exempting developing countries, including India and China, from tough emissions targets. Bush has ordered a Cabinet-level review of U.S. climate change policy that will look into what to do about concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere that scientists say are driving up the Earth's temperature.
Many scientists believe carbon dioxide emissions are contributing to the warming of the planet.
Whitman also hinted broadly to her EU counterparts that the administration might continue to participate in negotiations over the Kyoto protocol, despite Bush's criticism of the agreement during last year's campaign. Last week, however, the White House announced that the global warming agreement was dead and that Bush would develop a new approach. The decision enraged the Europeans, who elevated global warming to the top of their political agenda, and angered environmentalists, who said that the White House had undercut Whitman. A spokesman for Whitman declined to comment. The United States and its allies have spent nearly a decade trying to negotiate an agreement on combating global warming.