Negotiators from 178 countries reached agreement today on how to tackle climate change, fleshing out the Kyoto treaty and leaving the U.S. isolated from the rest of the world. Margot Wallstrom, the European Union’s environmental commissioner, said, “The rescue operation succeeded.” In the final pact reached in Bonn, the E.U. held firm against efforts to weaken enforcement mechanisms for penalizing countries that fail to meet their targets. But the E.U. did give ground on the issue of carbon sinks, allowing Canada, Russia, and Japan to count forests that absorb carbon dioxide as large credits toward emissions-reduction targets. Enviros dismissed the carbon-sinks plan as a crock, but were excited that a deal on Kyoto had been struck. Over the weekend, the leaders of the world’s other major developed nations, including France, Germany, and Japan, told U.S. President Bush that they would move to ratify Kyoto by next year, even without U.S. participation.
