Europeans say US lacks will on climate

As world leaders gather in New York for the highest-level conference yet on climate change, European leaders are expressing growing unease about the United States’ stance in international talks aimed at reaching a global agreement in Copenhagen in December.

Officials of several European countries have cited what they see as a lack of political will on the part of the United States to adequately address climate change. The American reluctance to accept any agreement that would require legally binding and internationally enforceable targets for reductions in greenhouse gas emissions could doom the Copenhagen session, they said.

Ahead of this week’s climate talks at the United Nations, the Europeans also expressed little hope that the United States Senate would act on a climate bill before the Copenhagen talks begin. They said the lack of domestic consensus sows doubt about whether the United States can keep any pledges it makes at Copenhagen, either on the level of reductions in global warming emissions or on financial commitments to help developing nations adapt to a changing climate.

Inaction in the Senate also limits the flexibility of America’s chief climate negotiator, Todd Stern.

The Obama administration is trying to satisfy European demands for firm targets and timetables, while reassuring a wary Senate that it is not signing on to a system that would impose steep economic costs on the United States that are not shared by developing countries like China and India.

Although the administration and its allies in Congress say they are deeply committed to meaningful action on climate change, they do not want to repeat the experience of Kyoto, Japan, in 1997, when the Clinton administration signed an international agreement that was repudiated by the Senate because it made few demands on the developing world. The United States never ratified the agreement, called the Kyoto Protocol.

John Ashton, the British foreign secretary’s special representative for climate change, said several large gaps need to be closed among the major industrialized countries before there could be any hope of success in Copenhagen.

Chief among them, he said, is the “ambition gap” between the United States and the nations of the European Union. While the United States discusses the broad outlines of climate policy, the Europeans have already pledged to cut their emissions by 20 percent by 2020, and more deeply if there is an international agreement.

The Europeans say a bill passed by the House in June showed American goodwill but still fell short of the European target and what scientists say is necessary to limit global temperature increases to 2 degrees Celsius over the planet’s temperature early in the Industrial Revolution, which means limiting future changes to about 2 degrees Fahrenheit above current temperatures. This limit is the internationally accepted goal.

The Senate has yet to act, but its targets are likely to be less ambitious.

Mr. Ashton said that the path forward is clear, but that politics are hampering movement in the United States and several other large countries. “There is no technological obstacle. There is no macroeconomic obstacle,” said Mr. Ashton, in Washington late last week for a meeting of major industrial countries on climate change. “The barriers are political.”

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