U.S. stance on global warming is under fire

First Australia won international applause for abandoning the United States and signing a global warming pact that Washington has long opposed. Then a U.S. Senate committee voted for deep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions.

The Bush administration's position, that technology, private investment and economic growth -- rather than mandatory emissions cuts -- will save the planet, is taking a beating this week at a U.N. climate change conference in Bali, Indonesia.

The public defeats for the U.S. stance, coupled with mounting warnings from scientists and others that only decisive action will control rising temperatures, have cast the Americans as wayward sons who need to wake up and join the rest of the world.

The conference is charged with launching negotiations that will eventually lead to an international accord to succeed the 1997 Kyoto Protocol on global warming. The United States is now the only major industrialized country to reject the agreement.

The impact of climate change plus deforestation could wipe out or severely damage nearly 60 percent of the Amazon forest by 2030 -- making it impossible to keep global temperatures from reaching catastrophic levels, an environmental group said Thursday. "The importance of the Amazon forest for the globe's climate cannot be underplayed," said Daniel Nepstad, author of a new report by the World Wide Fund For Nature released at the climate change conference.

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