EU slams U.S., Australia on climate change

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The European Union accused the United States and Australia on Monday of hampering international efforts to tackle climate change.

"We expect ... the United States to cooperate closer and not to continue having a negative attitude in international negotiations," Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas told delegates at a United Nations-sponsored meeting to review a report on the regional effects of rising global temperatures.

"It is absolutely necessary that they move because otherwise other countries, especially the developing countries, do not have any reason to move," he said.

Efforts to launch negotiations to extend the U.N. Kyoto Protocol on climate change beyond 2012 have floundered as nations resist committing to targets for cutting greenhouse gases.

The 27-nation EU agreed last month to cut its greenhouse gas emissions by at least 20 percent by 2020 compared to 1990 levels, challenging industrialized and developing countries to go further with a 30 percent cut which the EU would then match.

But so far other nations have not responded to that call, a fact which Dimas blamed largely on U.S. reluctance to cap its own emissions.

President George W. Bush pulled Washington out of Kyoto in 2001, saying it would harm the U.S. economy and unfairly excluded developing nations from emissions targets. He has invested instead in technologies such as hydrogen and biofuels.

Dimas acknowledged Washington had its own approach to fighting global warming but said it "does not help in reaching an international agreement and does not reduce emissions".

The United States' emissions were currently 16 percent above 1990 levels, while emissions from the 15 EU nations that joined the bloc before 2004 were down 1.6 percent in 2005, he said.

The so-called EU-15 agreed under Kyoto to cut their collective emissions by 8 percent compared to 1990 by 2012.

AUSTRALIA CRITICISED

The UN meeting lasts all week. Scientists and officials from more than 100 countries are reviewing a 21-page summary for policymakers which predicts climate change will cause glaciers in the Himalayas, the world's highest mountain range, to melt away.

Australia, which like the United States signed Kyoto but failed to ratify it, also drew Dimas' wrath on Monday.

"I cannot comprehend why Australia has not ratified the Kyoto Protocol," he said, picking out Australian delegates in the room and noting that 80 percent of Australia's public supported ratification.

"It's only political pride, if I can put it in a nice way, that prevents you from ratifying," he said. "If you would like to really give a boost to international negotiations, you could ratify Kyoto."

(Additional reporting by Alister Doyle in Oslo)