Environmental ministers from the world’s eight leading industrialized nations ended a conference in Japan yesterday without agreeing on a deadline for ratifying the Kyoto climate change agreement. The European Union and Japan want the treaty ratified by 2002, while the U.S. and Canada resisted any specific timeframe for ratification. The chief U.S. representative, W. Michael McCabe, said that agreeing to a deadline without the approval of the U.S. Congress would be inconsistent with “political realities.” Congress has been stubbornly opposed to ratification. Participants at the Group of Eight meeting also discussed plans to hold a Rio+10 conference on environmental issues in 2002, to mark the 10th anniversary of the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro.
