Background
A few days before its official ending, the Climate Summit in The Hague seems to be further away from an agreement than ever. On Tuesday 20 November, the European Union rejected a US compromise proposal on the use of carbon credits.
The United States is willing to reduce its claim for carbon credits from forests from 300m metric tonnes of carbon to 125m metric tonnes. European Union delegates opposed these new proposals, because they fear that even with these measures, the US will not make any substantial effort of reducing greenhouse gas emissions in its own country. On the contrary, the EU fears that the United States might increase its emissions level by 1 to 2 per cent between 1990 and 2010, instead of reducing it by 7 per cent, as agreed in Kyoto.
In the margin of the Climate Conference, the International Energy Agency (IEA) presented its report "
World Energy Outlook 2000", projecting an increase of energy-related CO² emissions by 60 % from 1997 to 2020.
