EU agrees to climate goals.

• Author: Dunn, Seth
• Position: European Union

As the breakup of the Antarctic ice shelf accelerates, so too does the endeavor to strengthen the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change. This June, more than two years of talks among delegates from some 150 countries were boiled down to a single negotiating text which will, in final form, commit industrial countries to cut back their emissions of greenhouse gases during the 21st century. These goals are expected to be part of a legally-binding protocol to the treaty that will be signed in December in Kyoto, Japan.

In March, the European Union took an important step toward this protocol by agreeing, for the first time, on a common goal for reducing emissions. Pushed through by the Netherlands' environment minister, the EU proposal would require industrial countries to cut greenhouse-gas emissions by 15 percent below 1990 levels by the year 2010. The region would meet the target as a whole, assigning individual countries different targets according to their energy sources, pollution levels, and economic structure.

Under this "burden-sharing" approach, 10 of the EU's 15 countries would lower emissions by between 5 and 40 percent. Others would be permitted to maintain emissions at 1990 levels or let them rise by as much as 40 percent. Though some differences over the approach remain, the proposal indicates progress toward working out the details - and has resuscitated the EU's long-running debate on whether or not to impose taxes on energy use or carbon emissions.

The United States has offered no specific targets or timetables, but instead has outlined an emission-trading program similar to one currently in use for cutting sulfur emissions under the Clean Air Act. Under the program, countries would be given emissions "budgets" with which they can "bank" saved emissions for future periods, trade emissions with other countries, and - controversially - borrow emissions, with a penalty, from a...