Climate change and its threat to Asia-Pacific economies grabbed attention at a regional trade summit in Vietnam where some leaders pressed for urgent action against greenhouse gas emissions. According to a draft of their final communique, the 21-nation Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting will pledge to accelerate the development of new technologies and alternative energy sources.

The statement echoed a call from leaders such as New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark, who said on Friday climate change should be a top priority for the trade-focused group. "The dire economic effects of unchecked climate change should be addressed by APEC because of the organisation's primary concern for growth and development," she told an audience of business leaders on Friday. "Without a commitment to sustainability, we will likely get neither in future," Clark said.

APEC members account for nearly half of the world's global trade and include some of its top polluting nations -- the United States and China -- as well as major energy suppliers such as Canada and Australia. In the draft statement, the group "encouraged member countries to transition to low-carbon energy systems and called for rapid transfer of low-carbon technologies to lower-income economies."

They also asked APEC energy ministers to assess how the group could promote cleaner energy and address climate change in 2007. The Hanoi summit is being held a day after global talks in Nairobi to widen the fight against climate change ended in gridlock.

Those talks stalled on setting steps to extend the UN's Kyoto Protocol beyond 2012 to rein in emissions mainly from burning fossil fuels in power plants, factories and cars widely blamed for heating the planet. Australia, which refuses to sign Kyoto because it would hurt the country's fossil-fuel reliant economy, is using the APEC summit to push for Asia-wide emissions trading as part of a planned "new-Kyoto" pact.

With climate change shaping up as a key issue in elections next year, Prime Minister John Howard recently overturned his blanket opposition to carbon trading to fight global warning. He has set up a task force with business to look at how Australia, the world's biggest coal exporter, could be part of a global trading scheme.

Howard told business leaders on Saturday he did not believe everything that is said about climate change. "I am, nonetheless, of the view that the accumulation of sensible scientific opinion suggests that the level of greenhouse gas emissions is potentially dangerous," Howard said. "And even if, at a minimum, we adopt the insurance principle, it's important that the world do something about it," he added.

In Hanoi, Howard has pressed his case for a six-nation alliance of the world's biggest polluters -- China, India, the United States, Australia, South Korea and Japan -- to promote new technologies to tackle climate change. Howard said he and Chinese President Hu Jintao agreed during their talks on Friday to establish a joint working group on clean coal technology.

The Australian leader also won support from US President George W. Bush. "John has got some very strong ideas about the use of technologies to enable countries like our own and the rest of the world to be able to grow, and at the same time, protect the environment," Bush said after their meeting on Friday. "I share those views," Bush said, pointing to his government's funding of research on alternative fuels and clean coal technology.
By Darren Schuettler
(Planet Ark, 20/11/2006)
http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/39057/story.htm